Oracle Databaſe 11g diſappoints

Oracle diſappoints. Once again. It ſhould come to no ſurpriſe — after all, ðis ðe company ƿho is even leß ſafe ðan MicroSoft, ƿho can’t even ſupport SQL DOMAINs or booleans and þinks the empty ſtring is no value at all, ƿho did a ſecond‐rate copycat Red Hat diſtro inſtead of going Debian…

But noƿ it ſeems ðey really made an effort at diſappointing. Ƿhile ðe neƿ features liſt looks impreßive, it only touches peripherals. No SQL improvements at all. Read again. No SQL improvements at all. No domains, no boolean logic data type, no diſtinction betƿeen NULL and the empty ſtring… any of ðese evidences of inertia is damning in itſelf, but all of ðem togeðer are a little too much to abſorb wiðout sickening.

It looks like Oracle is ſo ƿorried about abſorbing healðy competitors in an effort at being big enouȝ to avoid being gulped by MicroSoft, it actually forgot it ſtill has competitors at the DBMS ſpace — and it is being surpaßed at the fundamentals, ƿhich means they ſoon could catch up at ðe peripherals. Not to mention RDBMSs being around ðe corner. All hail our neƿ free ſoftƿare overlords, ¡your arrival is overdue!

But MySQL sucks.

I ƿas yeſterday to a ſpeech at an Univerſity by a ‘ſenior MySQL conſultant’ or ſomeþing the like, about ‘high availability and performance with MySQL cluſters’, a ƿell knoƿn oxymoron. Indeed đey are great bit bruſhers, but becauſe of the loƿ expectations of đeir clients, đeir high level of proprietary lock-in, and immediatiſt approach, they eßentially have garbage technology đat barely ƿorks and ƿill be hacked to deaþ.

Good neƿs for the competitive poſition of PoſtgreSQL, except đat it is not nice to ƿin due to the ſuffering of competitors’ uſers. And đat Microſoft has proved đat đis obſcurantiſt approach does ƿork in the market. Rational expectations anyone?

Trying to get a book fixed

I am ſince a feƿ monþs trying to correct đe ođerwiſe excellent Oracle Eßentials, 3rd edition, from O’Reilly:

Dr. Edgar F Codd firſt deſcribed the relational databaſe concept in an IBM Reſearch Report named Derivability, Redundancy, and Conſiſtency of Relations Stored in Large Data Banks. His 1970 paper was publiſhed in Communications of the ACM, and was called A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks. The inexiſtent Syſtem R4 Relational name ſeems to be a miſhearing of IBM’s Syſtem R ſubproject of the Future Syſtem project, đus named in 1974: probably an auþor overheard ſomeone mentioning it as ſomeþing like đe IBM Syſtem R, (where R ſtands) for Relational. Alſo, Oracle was not the firſt relational databaſe. It was the firſt SQL DBMS: it is neiđer a database, but a DBMS; nor relational, but baſed on SQL, ƿhich is not relational. Actually the firſt relational DBMS ſeems to have been the original Univerſity Ingres, before it became the current PoſtgreSQL.

Đe original text, ƿhich is doƿnright ƿrong, has been ƿidely quoted and publiciſed in the Ƿeb (according to Google); probably becauſe it is available as a ſample in eaſily-copied Adobe PDF:

The Evolution of the Relational Database

The relational database concept was described first by Dr. Edgar F. Codd in an IBM research publication entitled “System R4 Relational” appearing in 1970. Initially, it was unclear whether any system based on this concept could achieve commercial success. Nevertheless, […] RSI began in 1977 and released Oracle V.2 as the world’s first relational database within a couple of years. By 1985, Oracle could claim more than 1,000 relational database customer sites. By comparison, IBM would not embrace relational technology in a commercial product until the Query Management Facility in 1983.

It muſt have been the third time I ſend ſuch a commentary to the publiſhers, by means of their commentary pages. Until now, they ignored my commentary, not publiſhing even a ſanitiſed verſion of it. If ſomeone has a more diplomatic way of doint it, pleaſe, write your comments and wait for them to be publiſhed at the errata page or, at leaſt, in the one about unconfirmed errors. There are other errors in the ſame paragraph, alſo ſent as comments to O’Reilly:

The firſt IBM commercial SQL product was actually 1982’s SQL/DS for DOS/VSE, announced in 1981. 1983 ſaw alſo the launch of DB2.

And:

Actually the firſt IBM relational product was BS12.

Finally, QMF iſn’t a DBMS at all, only an interface to type and manage SQL queries.