Proprietary Sybase DBI/DBD module

[Chris Jack]

From: Joel Bernstein <joel at fysh.org>
> Chris Jack <chris_jack at msn.com> wrote:
> > Sybase will be releasing to CPAN but they're still finishing off work/testing etc.
> What's the question then?
 

The original question was how to get it into standard distributions. Dave Cross answered this. When I asked at the SAP/Sybase conference, the presenter, when I asked, said it would get released to CPAN sometime (but it's possible the presenter didn't know). Finding out how to get it into standard distributions doesn't require the code to be immediately available on CPAN.
 
The driver is currently available at http://infocenter.sybase.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.sybase.infocenter.dc01694.1570/doc/html/car1311374855236.html
 
> > Niche is a point in time concept. SAP buying Sybase was a significant coupe for both companies. SAP competes head to head with Oracle in applications yet had been beholden to Oracle for its database. This had lead to all the complications you would expect. SAP is now pouring bucket loads of money into development of Sybase. years ago, I was pessimistic that Sybase was going to become another hard to sell legacy skill on my CV (anyone remember SQLPlus: now there's a legacy database skill...). Now, I'm not so sure. SAP is targeting Sybase as being the number commercial database in the world. They were able to add some credibility to that aim with statistics about the number of sites now migrating from Oracle to Sybase. But who knows.
> That sounds pretty niche to me - a database I used to use a bit in the
> past which is now basically used to support a certain big app. Not
> seeing anybody migrating TO Sybase, are you?

SAP quoted 800 sites in the last year migrating from Oracle to Sybase. Sybase is currently the 4th biggest commercial database (http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/eye-on-oracle/oracle-the-clear-leader-in-24-billion-rdbms-market/), but it's the 47.9% growth in 2011 (compared to under 20% for everyone else) that makes me think that there's life (and opportunity) in remaining in the Sybase camp.

Sybase scr"wed itself (IMHO) 10 years back by being very slow to come to the row level locking party. So software like SAP (at the time) that required row level locking had no alternative than to look to vendors like Oracle. Oracle then stole a march on Sybase again by coming out with a grid computing solution: not enought CPU - just add another box. Sybase is now playing catch up and with the resource of SAP behind it. It is also very prepared to compete on price. DB2, SQLServer and Teradata are in slightly different markets (IMHO): so really Sybase is primarily competing against Oracle.
 
Ooops: I meant SQLBase (although SQLPlus is kind of ironically funny: if there's a database tool that should qualify as legacy, SQLPlus would be it).

> Finally, please, please, please fix your mailer, the
> quoting/attribution in that was impressively broken and it took me
> minutes just to -read- your reply.

Apologies: I use hotmail and it looks fine when I send it. I usually switch to Plain Text - but on this occasion I had left it on Rich Text. The problem is in the list's conversion software. I doubt either Hotmail or List software is going to change anytime soon - so I will try to be careful.
 

From: 
> PostgreSQL and SQLite are both excellent open source databases that are still actively developed.

True, but they don't even appear on the radar for market share.
 

From: DAVID HODGKINSON davehodg at gmail.com
> Can you define "proprietary" please?
 

All I meant was Sybase was writing it itself. They've put a lot of effort into improving performance/functionality.

> It will be shipped with .so files?

See link above.
 
Regards
Chris