[Info-vax] MariaDB (Re: OT: what is old is new again?)

[David Froble]

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> Den 2016-11-23 kl. 21:05, skrev David Froble:
>> Neil Rieck wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at 4:52:17 PM UTC-4, David Froble wrote:
>>>> Craig A. Berry wrote:
>>>>> On 5/1/16 1:48 PM, Neil Rieck wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> We're currently running MariaDB-5.5-25 which can outperform ISAM RMS
>>>>>> They give it away but sell support
>>>>>> contracts. But they do not offer something for OpenVMS which means we
>>>>>> must rely on someone "to provide us with a build" or "do a build
>>>>>> ourselves". Now I asked that single provider if he was willing to 
>>>>>> sell
>>>>>> us a support contract and responded as not being interested in doing
>>>>>> this.
>>>>>
>>>>>> So for me I can only see two options.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1) develop a fallback strategy based upon Mimer
>>>>>  >
>>>>>> 2) hope that someone at VSI is considering doing a MariaDB build
>>>>>
>>>>> And of course "doing a build" would be of limited help with your
>>>>> situation unless they were also going to offer support for it, right?
>>>>>
>>>>> At a TUD a few years ago, someone asked about OpenVMS Engineering
>>>>> providing support for MySQL and the HP person present said, "Why do 
>>>>> you
>>>>> want us to do it?". Apparently that was a rhetorical question as he
>>>>> didn't wait for an answer. It seemed pretty obvious to me that the
>>>>> reason people want support for open source packages from the 
>>>>> purveyor of
>>>>> VMS is that no one else is offering it.
>>>> Well, it seems like an opportunity to me.  For example, I believe it's
>>>> Mark Berryman who is building MarieDB for VMS.  If VSI decided to
>>>> distribute the product as part of VMS, and partnered with Mark to
>>>> provide support, and made sure customers had easy methods of obtaining
>>>> such support, ...
>>>>
>>>> The "vendor" would perhaps have a sufficient revenue stream from 
>>>> support
>>>> to insure the resources for such support.
>>>>
>>>> Or, SQlite, or Postgre, or ...
>>>>
>>>> The key would be for VSI to pick one or more RDBMS products and make it
>>>> happen.
>>>
>>> Let me second those remarks:
>>>
>>> First off, while I have been using Mark's port of MariaDB-5.5-25 
>>> since 2014,
>> we have noticed a few issues. When you check the blogs most people say
>> something
>> like "Oh, that problem went away when we upgraded to MariaDB-10.1"
>>>
>>> I understand Mark works for a division of HP/HPE that is being 
>>> outsourced so
>> he is very busy doing work that results in putting food on the table. 
>> That
>> said,
>> with no version of MariaDB-10 on the horizon for OpenVMS, I have 
>> resorted to
>> installing CentOS Linux on a nearby server, then installing 
>> MariaDB-10.1.19
>> which we access from our OpenVMS development platform via the network.
>> (think of
>> this experiment as an alternative form of SAN; I did this only to see 
>> if our
>> issues just went away, which they did)
>>>
>>> I'm not certain what the open source community did between MariaDB-5 and
>> MariaDB-10 but everyone claims it is faster and we noticed this as well.
>>
>> Isn't that part of the reason for new versions, to fix problems?
>>
>>> We are at a point where 50% of our OpenVMS data still remains on RMS 
>>> and we
>> would like to move it to MariaDB but do not want to be trapped in a
>> single-source situation. (which VSI could solve by including MariaDB with
>> OpenVMS;
>>
>> Now, this is where people like me, third party vendors, get confused.
>> Whether it's Mark, or someone else, or VSI, what's the difference?
> 
> Are you asking what the difference is between one single man and a
> company of 100+ people?
> 
> Must be something I guess, since many do think there is a difference.
> 
> 
> 

Not at all.  I didn't mention numbers.  There are surely larger organizations 
than VSI.  Regardless, what's important is expertize in the product in question. 
  I do seem to recall more than one statement from someone at VSI that "there is 
nobody at VSI that worked on ????".  Now, what good is numbers, if not one of 
them knows the product in question?

I ran into this many years ago.  When attempting to sell the Tolas ERP system 
which did not use RMS for data files.  Some bigots would not consider the system 
because it didn't use RMS, regardless of how good, or bad, the application 
system was.  Didn't make sense then, still doesn't make sense now.

Just as today's bigots will say that if an RDBMS isn't used, the application 
isn't acceptable.  The reality is whether the application system does the job 
adequately, or not.

But let's just look at this:

"which VSI could solve by including MariaDB with OpenVMS"

So, tell me, how this would be of any help, if nobody at VSI had a clue about 
MariaDB?  Not saying they do, or don't.

Makes no sense to me, but, then, I don't get out much ....