There's a persistent perception that open source software is being ignored in the enterprise, that IT management fears it and it ends up being more costly to deploy than proprietary solutions. That's certainly the perception that some major software vendors would like you to have. But it's Jeffrey Hammond's job to dispel those perceptions, at least when they aren't accurate. As an analyst for Forrester Research, Hammond covers the world of software development as well as Web 2.0 and rich internet applications, so he sees how open source is being used on a daily basis. He'll be speaking at OSCON, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, talking about the true cost of using open source, and he gave us a sample of what's going on in the enterprise at the moment.

James Turner: To begin, can you just talk about the areas you …

There has been no shortage of lively discussion on open source software licenses with recent shifts in the top licenses, perspectives on the licenses or lack of them for networked, SaaS and cloud-based software, increased prominence of a Microsoft open source license and concern over the openness (or closedness, depending on your perspedtive) of the latest devices. Amid all of it, we’re pleased to present our latest long-form report, CAOS 12 - The Myth of Open Source …

As our data warehousing process grows and the workflows get more complex, we've revisited the question of what tools to use in this process. Out of curiosity, I had a look at basing such a process on Hadoop/Hive for scalability reasons, but the lack of mature tools and the sacrifices on efficiency that would entail meant we're better off using something else as long as a distributed processing platform is the only thing that can get the job done. I'm also curious about the transition to continuous integration, a model I noticed showing up a couple of years ago and now getting some air under its wings as CEP, IBM's …

I'm conflicted about the latest twist of the MySQL release saga, ie the announcement of the 6.0.11 alpha version and the accompanying note that it's the last 6.0 release and will be replaced by the already discussed milestone model. From an engineering point of view, I think this is the right step. I'm not sure about that, because I can't really tell exactly what is the engineering model chosen: trunk-first, then backport, or fix-in-releases, then forward port. I also can't tell whether the milestone model is going to be timeboxed or feature-scoped. Personally, I would prefer to see the former of both alternatives.

From a customer point of view, I'm even more confused, though much less concerned. Okay, so 6.0 won't become the marketing version number of any MySQL Enterprise release? Doesn't …

Yesterday, The Pythian Group issued a press release about my book, Pythian’s partnership with Sun, and our new “MySQL Adoption Accelerator Package”. I am not a marketing guru, but I can tell you what we the package means in terms of new work that the MySQL teams have been doing.

Basically, the MySQL Adoption Accelerator Package combines customized training with a comprehensive audit of systems. The name “Adoption Accelerator” makes it sound like it’s only for new applications that are almost ready to go live. What the program actually does is have us evaluate your systems, and intensively train you in the areas you want and need. The program is designed to suit all your needs, whether it’s teaching you about one topic (say, query optimization) or an entire range of topics, from Architecture to ZFS (special issues with running MySQL on ZFS, that is, but that did not fit a cute …

50 things to know before migrating Oracle to MySQL by Baron Schwartz is an interesting read, it points out clearly that MySQL is not Oracle. However, Oracle is not the benchmark by which all others are to be judged. So what do we compare with, or actually, why do we compare at all?

Hmm, so we take three steps back, and get a much better view... Marten Mickos (MySQL CEO from 2001 until the Sun acquisition in 2008) said it all along "MySQL does not compete with Oracle". I don't think people actually appreciated what he was saying, or even believed that he meant precisely what he said. They might have thought "oh that's just positioning and protesting too much to make the opposite point". But he wasn't, it was the clear plain truth and it still is today (and so it should remain, I think).

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I’ve been talking to device manufacturers and the Linux-centered software providers that feed them code for mobile phones, TV set-top boxes, industrial control, automotive technology, medical devices, military uses and a slew of other categories commonly classified as embedded devices, and I can definitively report that I am not hearing or sensing any fear, uncertainty or doubt (FUD) as a result of Microsoft’s TomTom patent suit.

I wrote last month that the controversial MS TomTom suit was not aimed at Linux as much as TomTom and some market categories for Microsoft. While we must all remind ourselves that anything may be possible considering court rulings and Microsoft strategies, I don’t see Microsoft’s TomTom suit as truly aimed at Linux. If it is, I don’t see it having much, if any, impact on Linux. …

I was working on a client’s server today to troubleshoot some variances between the result timing of some queries. Guess what I came across - the profiler is not available in certain enterprise releases but it is available on community versions of the same release number.

I can understand if that feature was something that wasn’t fully tested in the enterprise code base and thus was only released in the community version - but if that’s the case then I don’t understand why the same version releases of Community and Enterprise can have different feature sets. That goes against the whole idea of versioning. Someone correct me if I’m wrong here but that is very frustrating.

The MySQL Enterprise Monitor continuously monitors MySQL servers and alerts to potential problems before they impact the system. It helps eliminating security vulnerabilities, improves replication, optimizes performance, and more. Its newest feature, Quan (Query Analyzer), helps identify queries that could be tuned to improve performance. Quan enables database administrators to do the work that would otherwise require hours in just minutes, or even seconds, and it provides ongoing statistical information about the performance of your queries.

MySQL Enterprise Monitor is a commercial offering by Sun Microsystems, and so was the documentation. To help anyone (even if they're not customers) get a better and complete understanding of what exactly MySQL Enterprise Monitor is about and what it can do, we've decided to make its full documentation publicly available. This has been done now, and the docs are part of the MySQL Manual now; see: …

I see that Sun prominently quoted one of our Engineers in their recent press release for Query Analyzer (Quan).  He’s a bit embarrassed by the attention, but his quote is spot on… Quan is a really solid and useful product.

Of course, there is nothing there that you can’t get by combining various tools like mysqlsla, innotop, mysqlreport and spending some time in analysis.  What Quan adds is making the information readily available, and letting someone without expert level …