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EnterpriseDB chases Oracle and MySQL on Web 2.0

Once again, with feeling

LinuxWorld Having spent three years trying to get purchase on Oracle's mighty database business, EnterpriseDB is embracing Web 2.0 developers with a bundled version of Postgres.

EnterpriseDB - whose existing database product is a version of Posgres that's sold under a commercial license and that the company claims is compatible with Oracle - has launched EnterpriseDB Postgres along with online Postgres support.

EnterpriseDB Posgres is a pre-configured and certified set of Postgres modules that come with one-click installation, graphical user interface, monitoring and SSL encryption. The database retains its BSD license so it's free to download. Of course, EnterpriseDB charges for support, starting at $1,000 per CPU a year.

The Postgres Resource Center features forums, sample code, and administration and development guides for environments such as Ruby on Rails, PHP and Perl.

The company has spent the better part of its young life trying to steal customers away from Oracle by offering a lower price, better service and a database that's compatible with Oracle, thereby minimizing the pain of a switch. While business has been coming, customers at the enterprise level do not switch lightly, meaning business comes relatively slowly and is often initiated by new projects.

In harnessing the growth provided by the Web 2.0 crowd, EnterpriseDB is not just taking on Oracle - it's also hoping to challenge MySQL, which is used by 50 per cent of developers and is closely identified with the LAMP stack.

EnterpriseDB hopes to persuade developers that as their projects grow, Postgres has greater scalability and more mission-critical features than is provided by MySQL, which is itself trying to grow up out of the embedded, OEM and web markets and into the enterprise. Oracle, meanwhile, has fared less well than MySQL in getting developers to use its database for Web 2.0 projects.

EnterpriseDB is not giving up on taking on Oracle at the enterprise infrastructure layer. Also launched this week is GridSQL for EnterpriseDB Advanced Server targeting OLAP and data warehousing, and intended to challenge Oracle's grid and Real Application Cluster (RAC) offerings. The database uses a shared nothing distributed architecture for parallel queries, to offload reporting from big servers connected using a grid configuration. GridSQL for EnterpriseDB Advanced Server scales from eight to 16 nodes.®

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