Hello, I had no time last week and I also hoped someone would come up with a bit more specific report. But obviously there were not really many SAPDB users at the conference.
I was attending all presentations, including the discussion afterwards. I also attended the meeting in the Beergarden on Friday evening, which was organised by Georg Richter (PHP) and I think the beer was sponsored by MySQL :-) Thanks again for that. The first presentation was held by Kaj Arn�. He roughly showed the audience the way MySQL will go in the next couple of months. (The so called roadmap) He pointed out, that MySQL didn't buy SAPDB. It is just licensed and SAP is still the owner of the DB. But all further development will be lead by MySQL. Technically this will happen with the first new Major release 7.5. The first they will do is to implement some sort of interface or so called "Proxy" which is going to enable MySQL Clients to connect to SAPDB. In the slides it looked like it sits on top of the client-library of SAPDB. This probably will enable any MySQL Application to connect to SAP, but as I understood it, there will be no SQL syntax transformations. One interesting thing was the fact that I may could also use the export and import tools of MySQL. But that would be it for the beginning. SAPDB and MySQL keep on developing their own branches with the intention to grow slowly together. Which means MySQL rather w! ill become more and more a SAPDB than vice verca. ;-) MySQL will inherit all functionalities like views, stored procs and so on. SAPDB itself is probably going to rip off all "old" code which partly seems to be written in pascal(!!) and do everything in C(++). He said that the development of SAPDB will still be done by SAPDB people. But the support will be done by MySQL mailing list or of course if you pay for. Zak Greant from MySQL, to whom I was speaking at the beergarden for quite a while, told me similar things the evening before. As Ralf Czekalla already wrote on the list, the slides should be up on the linux tag website at http://www.linuxtag.org/2003/de/conferences/material.html in a while. Kaj Arn� also was focusing the SAPDB users directly, obviously the critics which were written at the list were heard (or read:). He explained the licensing politics of MySQL. He pointed out, that it is ethically ok to be commercial, when the user of the db is commercial. That is was always the target of MySQL AB to be a commercial company and working for profit. But he said they do absolutely have no understandings for the people which are criticizing the new way of the licensing scheme for the new DB. People where lucky enough to get such a DB for free, but now only free software (GPL) can use the database for free. Commercial users are going to have to pay for it. ( I come back to that point later) At this point, some PHP person intervened and pointed out that there is a problem with the license compatiblity between GPL and the way PHP is licensed. Kaj Arn� pointed out that this is a problem but they have their people working on that. They are related very closely to PHP and he thinks they will find a solution on that. And then, they still do not have a name for the database, and they still do not know the price. But Kaj Arn� said that it will be significantly higher than the price for the MySQL at the moment. The next presentation was done by J�rg Hoffmeister (SAP). The slides are already up on the sapdb.org site ( http://www.sapdb.org/7.4/pdf/linuxday2003.pdf) He avoided to say anything about MySQL and SAPDB by saying that anything important was said by Kaj Arn�. There were a few interesting things: The number of SAP installations using SAPDB as the main database doubled within the time period SAPDB is open source. He also mentioned the very lively and productive mailing list. People on the list do a good job in finding and reporting problems. They can not replace the QA of SAP but some things went into the productive code already. He said that the 7.4 will be the last SAP release of the database and that there will probably be a hot standby functionality. (have a look at the slides) After that, was the "open discussion" with SAPDB users (no "official" person of SAP showed up) and MySQL represented by Kaj Arn� and Zak Greant. I also have seen Georg Richter and some other PHP people. And lets say a hand full of SAP people. At the whole maybe 20 to 30 persons. And this is where it gets less technical. To be honest at that point I was a bit annoyed because 1,5 hours earlier Kaj Arn� let me feel like a parasite, by using a software for free which was intended to be used free (and was promoted to be free: "Are you still paying database fees?" remember that?)! So I frankly told him exactly my feelings about his attitude against me as a SAPDB user and all other SAPDB users who where and are actively posting on the list and obviously participating in the develpment by doing bugsearching ;-) and reporting things. His explanation was that he finds it perfectly ethical to "be commercial if the user is commercial". And to shorten this, the SAPDB users have to accept it. Since I am not very firm of the MySQL-GPL-licensing, I tried to figure out some scenarios. For me as a consultant it is important to know when my customers have to pay for licenses and when they don't. Things they said: - When I am building a GPLed software and publish it, I do not have to buy a license - When I am selling a product which runs on SAPDB (means uses SAPDB) I have to buy a license. (here some other guy pointed out, that it is possible to connect to a GPLed software with a commercial software without breaking the GPL. But he said it is not easy. (There was no objection from MySQL) - When a company builds its own software and uses it commercially but does not distribute it, you don't have to buy a license. - When I as a contractor getting contracted by a company to build a software for them, they don't have to buy a license. It was pretty tough to get this information, I can tell you ;-) But I am still confused because a few sentences later Kaj Arn� again said "The rule is: if you're commercial, we are commercial". Question: What means commercial? Resume: If I can rely on the words of Kaj Arn� (maybe he or Zak will comment my article) for me as a consultant there will be no change. As I pointed out, the attitude of MySQL was a bit strange for me at some points, compared to some other open source projects. (At the presentation of Bruce Momjian/PostgreSQL some guy asked what the difference between PostgreSQL and MySQL is. One thing he pointed out was that PostgreSQL is a real open source project. That if you contribute to the community you do not have to give away the right of your piece of software to any company. Whereas when contributing to mySql you have to transfer all rights to the company or it will not be part of the software. Think about ethics again!) When it comes to selling a product, I will switch to PostgreSQL. But for now I do stick to SAPDB. Ok, I hope I gave you a brief roundup about LinuxTag and SAPDB/MySQL. Live long an prosper, Manfred ______________________________________________________________________________ ComputerBild (15-03) empfiehlt: Der beste Spam-Schutz ist bei WEB.DE FreeMail - Deutschlands beste E-Mail - http://s.web.de/?mc=021124 _______________________________________________ sapdb.general mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://listserv.sap.com/mailman/listinfo/sapdb.general
