New about Database

After Powersoft acquired Watcom and its famed Fortran compiler, marketing VP Tom Herring told me that the hidden jewel of the acquisition might well be a little DBMS, Watcom SQL. To put it mildly, Tom was right. Watcom SQL became SQL Anywhere; Powersoft was acquired by Sybase; Powersoft’s and Sybase’s main products both fell on hard times; Sybase built a whole mobile technology division around SQL Anywhere; and the whole thing just got sold for billions of dollars to SAP. Chris Kleisath recently briefed me on SQL Anywhere Version 12 (released to manufacturing this month), which seemed like a fine opportunity to catch up on prior developments as well.
The first two things to understand about SQL Anywhere is that there actually are three products:
Sybase SQL Anywhere, a mid-range relational DBMS.
Sybase UltraLite, a DBMS for mobile devices.
Sybase MobiLink, a replication/sync tool.
and also that there are three main deployment/use cases:
Generic desktop or server computers. This was the original market for SQL Anywhere.
Laptop/handheld computers. This was the original growth market for SQL Anywhere. In particular, Siebel Systems’ first growth spurt was selling sales force automation software on laptop computers with SQL Anywhere underneath.
Specialized devices. Earlier this decade, Sybase thought SQL Anywhere’s big growth market was on specialized devices. (I recall a video featuring some kind of automated pill dispensing machine for hospitals.)

My SQL and RDMBS

The Oracle and MySQL RDBMS are very different products. This makes me happy. I used to work on the Oracle RDBMS. It has a lot of features that do amazing things. Unfortunately, this also makes it extremely hard to modify. MySQL doesn't have as many features. This makes it easier to modify. This also means there are a lot of things to fix in it when you care about high-performance and high-availability OLTP workloads.But now we have a new story emerging from an independent source of news on the Oracle-Sun merger.