<careful: long>
Thanks, Carsten, for pointing this out. When people complain that SAP DB
hasn't managed to take off, than I suggest to compare oranges with oranges.
Without dismissing MySQL's merits and popularity, SAP DB is designed and
used by companies that have very high requirements in terms of their
infrastructure and system architecture. Hundreds, maybe thousands or
millions of customers and employees depend on this. For these reasons, these
companies have usually the funds for hardware, software and IT staff; and
probably more important, significant investments in software and service
agreements in place. Considering the importance and the implications of a
change of one of the most fundamental parts of an enterprise architecture, I
can tell first hand that this is almost never based on purely financial
considerations. Decision makers don't mind spending reasonable amounts of
money as long as it secures their job. IT staff, especially here in the USA,
are strangely conservative and don't like to do things they don't know. If
SAPDB was still able to catch and convince 600 or 1000 of those companies to
drop several hundred thousand Euros or Dollars in previous Oracle/IBM
investments - than one can consider this a great success!
When I go to the MySQL web site, I'm really annoyed to read on just about
every page "MySQL -the most successful open-source database" with "30.000
downloads per day". Quantity is not necessarily a proof of success or
quality, everybody knows that, it's merely a sign of either a larger initial
target market, better adoptation to this particular market and / or better
promotion.
MySQL has all of that: Its success is almost entirely driven by the internet
and web developpers. Just about every ISP in the world offers MySQL for free
even as part of their low end hosting packages; a service that one cannot
offer in the same way (and same price) with SAP DB.
PHP talks directly with MySQL, and the combination of PHP/MySQL is a perfect
match to build neat web sites, which is largely sufficient to fulfill the
requirements of an army of independent web designers all around the world
(who usually do not have the funds/budgets for expensive licensing, hosting
and hardware). This is what makes MySQL so successful, just like MS ACCESS
is used by just about everybody in the SOHO market. Again, I don't want to
dismiss MySQL, not even MS ACCESS. They're convenient, they are cheap, fast,
easy to install and quick to learn: They do precisely what most people
want/need. There is always a large demand for those kind of products, much
more than for "enterprise databases".
Actually today, everybody who is about to make important suggestions for a
new system/project very likely knows SAP DB. So, why isn't it more used, in
spite of all its obvious advantages?
1. As said earlier: Many - if not most - projects simply don't need these
enterprise features.
2. The Internet-based projects that don't need these features often don't
want to spend the additional money for server hardware / backup facilities.
This immediately excludes about 90% of the projects.
3. There are very few dedicated SAP DB experts & consultants on the market.
This is probably the biggest handicap at this point of time for a larger
adoptation by corporate customers.
4. Internet Service Providers who could greatly help promoting SAP DB are
reluctant to offer it, because of the higher hardware requirements, the
potentially error-prone and support intensive ODBC/JDBC setup, and the fact
that unlike MySQL SAP DB initially requires a machine-wide installation and
configuration where MySQL can be installed and exclusively managed from any
individual virtual server. Consequently, the support staff suddenly needs
much more knowledge about dbs than it's ever required for a MySQL
installation, but since SAP DB is a free product, this does not
automatically justifies the same connection-based pricing like with hosted
Oracle or MS SQL solutions.
5. Large pool of free or low cost applications that are built on top of MyS
QL.
6. Exceptional language support of MySQL
7. Relatively small overall number of enterprise clients who even consider
to change anything about their existing infrastructure, and much longer
lifecircles of existing enterprise systems.
So, was the SAP DB-project doomed from the very beginning? No. It takes time
to develop a community and to earn acceptance. especially as both the source
code as well as the fields where SAP DB are applied are too complex and
important to be simply a nice secondary business for a normal (web-)
developer.
Nevertheless, little by little, people get familiar with it, projects and
applications are developed and released that use SAP DB. These projects will
slowly but surely widen the portfolio and demonstrate to a larger audience
its fields of applications, and will also enhance the general perception of
the name SAP for the small and medium size companies, and make it appear to
be more accessible (and affordable!). If SAP AG wins only a single client
for the larger commercial products due to the involvment in SAP DB, a lot of
the efforts and investments into SAP DB paid themselves out already.
I admit that when I first heard the news of this partnership, I was terribly
disappointed. While I am not particulary active on this list, SAP DB turned
into a cornerstone of my entire business strategy for the next years to
come, in a role that is simply not possible with the name and licensing of
MySQL, at least not in the intitial first (and maybe second) year. I've
always appreciated to work in niche markets, where you offer a highly
specialized and unique service to high-maintenance clients, or those who
have the potential to turn into those. Unfortunately, this is just about the
complete opposite of what the new SAP DB/MySQL partnership promises to
provide. Here in the USA the MySQL/PHP/Linux/Apache combination is such a
commodity that countless developers work for $10/hour and less, and are
often considered to be completely replaceable. It'll be a long way until
MySQL AB can change this perception, if they are ever able to do so at all.
Hopefully, and on this more optimistic tone I'll finally shut up, this new
partnership will eventually bring a new product that retains the unique and
powerful character of SAP DB, and that is widely considered to be successful
not because of ten gazillion small installations but because of the
reliablity and exceptional quality of the server, of the
developers/consultants, and of course because of an impressive portfolio of
very happy clients.
Thanks.
Markus
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Carsten Kuckuk
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 8:26 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Look, SAP is abandoning SAPDB - it failed to take off
Stephen,
I think your overall assessment of the process SAP DB got sold off is
correct. But I have two comments to make:
(1) Rainer Stickdorn's book about Adabas D states, that the database
was able to run distributedly on different servers and run transaction
covering several servers. SAP DB does not have this ability, so
apparently, SAP bought a castrated version of Adabas.
(2) Use of SAP DB is more widespread than people think. I know of
several companies that already use it, and several consultants who
are, well were, in the process of switching their customers web sites
from MySQL to SAP DB. The problem is, that nobody hears about them as
SAP DB is so easy to use, and even if they want to spend money on it,
there is/was no way except for taking one of those excessively priced
SAP contracts that no small or medium sized business can afford. If
SAP had published the SAP DB manuals as books, or sold cheap support
contracts (USD 100 per year for setup, USD 100 per incident or
something like this) I'm sure they would have gotten a totally
different picture of their own success.
Carsten
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