The Food
and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has
selected MySQL as its open source server-side database
standard.
With more than
3,700 staff members, the FAO's mandate is to raise levels of
nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of
rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world
economy.
Key activities
include putting information within reach, sharing policy expertise
and bringing knowledge to the field. Over 200 database systems are
used to collect, analyse and disseminate knowledge and data that
aid development of the member countries.
Until now, almost
all systems have been based on proprietary solutions, but the FAO
says it believes the inclusion of open source software could help
it better accomplish mandates and objectives.
"One of the key
requirements for our technical information systems is that they
must be very easily available and accessible by the member
countries as well as easy to set up and maintain," explains Kurt
Vertucci, the FAO’s senior officer, IT governance. "We cannot
dictate to countries what their infrastructure should be.
Therefore, in addition to requiring very flexible licensing, these
systems need to be portable and based on open standards."
After evaluating
alternatives, FAO selected MySQL as its open source database
standard, particularly because of features such as procedures,
triggers and views. Vertucci says, "MySQL proved to be easier to
set up [than the alternatives], easier to manage and has become a
widely deployed standard in the developing countries, helping
governments to achieve significant costs savings, without
sacrificing database speed and power."
To help the FAO IT
team to migrate and implement their new open source database, the
MySQL professional services organisation delivered a mentoring
program including training, consulting and workshops to enable the
agency to learn best practices and to initially configure the
systems according to their specific needs.