The View From 25B

UK IUA Code Sprint - It Takes a Global Village

Emma McGrattan — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:13:24 +0000

Last week the UK IUA held a very successful and well attended User Group meeting at the University of Westiminster in London. We decided to host a two day development code sprint immediately before the user group event, and I thought you’d be interested to learn more about the results.

We had 16 participants with roughly an equal number of Ingres employees and community members drawn from the UK, US, Canada and Denmark. Companies represented included EDS, AAH Pharmaceuticals, Bording Data and Oxford University. Roy Hann, the chairman of the UK IUA, was a great source of light relief and we uncovered a hidden talent for humorous t-shirt design e.g. the t-shirt Roy is wearing in the above photo says “18 out of 20 Failed Banks Ran Oracle”

Projects Undertaken:

Compressed Backups – Jeremy Hankinson added an option to the Ingres backup utility to enable the use of bzip2 to compress the backup set as the database is backed up. The use of compression will be automatically detected when the backup set is restored.

Drupal on Ingres in the Amazon EC2 – A pre-configured Amazon Machine Image (AMI) that combines Ingres and Drupal in a ready-to-run configuration was prepared by Ray Fan and Roy Deal Simon during the sprint. The use of this AMI to deploy Ingres and Drupal, a leading open source content management system, removes the need to identify and configure all of the various components required to use this popular technology.

Enforced logging of all database activity – Alex Hanshaw added to ability to specify a list of databases in CBF for which logging cannot be disabled.

Ability to disable logging when copying or unloading a database – To speed up unloading or copying databases Paul Mason added an option to the respective utilities to provide the ability to not log activity while these actions are in progress.

Command history recall – The Ingres SQL utility for Linux and UNIX supports the command line option -history_recall to provide a command history within the terminal monitor. For some reason that wasn’t the default behavior and few people knew of it, and also it didn’t honor ctrl-c or ctrl-d. Jeremy Hankinson added the history_recall feature by default and fixed the related bugs.

bit datatype - Keith Bolam added a bit datatype to Ingres along with a set of functions that can operate on the bit type such as bit_set, bit_clr, bit_extract and bit_test

Specify OS commands from the Terminal Monitor - Geraint Jones added the ability to specify an operating system command to be executed from within the Ingres SQL Terminal Monitor. In a somewhat related project Chris Hane added the ability to create a database from within the Ingres SQL terminal monitor.

Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex routine – A soundex routine is used to index data based on how it sounds as opposed to how its spelt so that if you’ve no idea of exactly how to spell something, like a name, you can still search for it. For example the names Smith and Smyth would not appear next to each other in a phone directory, but if they were indexed based on how they sounded they’d be next to each other. The original Ingres soundex routine encodes the string as a four character value and if two names sound the same they should have the same encoding. The problem is that the four character encoding is too limiting and can result in false positives e.g. Nichols and Nicholson which don’t sound the same have the same soundex value. The new Daitch-Mokotoff soundex routine which was implemented by Marty Bowes at the sprint encodes it as a series of six digit elements which is far more reliable and accurate.

Display the query plan for a running query - Karl added the ability to display the query execution plan for a running session from the Ingres iimonitor utility. A future refinement will see this feature added to IPM also.

The above was intended to give you a feel for the activities we undertook. There were a number of other projects discussed or started and you should see those pop up on the community site in the future.

Top Ingres Community Contributor

Roger Burkhardt and Rick Van der Lans

The UK IUA has established an award for an outstanding community contributor and this year’s award was presented to Rick Van der Lans who has recently published a book titled The SQL Guide to Ingres. Rick was available over lunch to sign copies of the book for user group meeting attendees. In full disclosure - I was involved in reviewing Rick’s book and was invited to provide the foreword for it, but I would strongly suggest that you consider adding it to your bookshelf. The community contributor award was presented by Roger Burkhardt who is the CEO at Ingres Corporation. I saw Roger pack a copy of it in his laptop bag for the flight from London to New York and I have no doubt that he now has a black-belt in Ingres SQL.

Open Source Bridge Conference

Emma McGrattan — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:03:58 +0000

Open Source Bridge Conference

I’m in Portland today and will be speaking at The Open Source Bridge conference later this morning. I was delighted to see when browsing the agenda over breakfast that close to 30% of the speakers at this event are female, and the topics they’re talking about run the gamut from seriously technical sessions, to community and business development. The session I’ll be delivering later today relates to my last blog topic - leveraging open source to enable innovation in this tough economy.

This morning’s first keynote speaker is the Mayor of Portland, Sam Adams. Mayor Adams is talking about the challenges he has faced in implementing open source in city government. He also stated his aspirations to “out-open-source” his counterpart in Vancouver, BC, who has stated goals around the use of open source in city government. The second keynote of the morning is being delivered by Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki, and he is talking about agile software development which is a topic I find fascinating given the dysfunctional nature of software development.

I always find that the excitement at open source community events is contagious and this is evidenced by the fact that there’s a hacker lounge open 24 hours a day at the conference hotel. I stopped by in the wee hours of this morning and was amazed to see how much work and networking was taking place. This is the inaugural Open Source Bridge Conference and its an event that I’ll definitely plan to attend next year.

Fueling Innovation by Avoiding Vendor Lock-in

Emma McGrattan — Wed, 27 May 2009 15:19:24 +0000

Earlier today we announced the availability of the Ingres Development Stack for JBoss. This stack is one of the products we defined as part of our “New Economics of IT” strategy. The stack bundles together Ingres and JBoss Developer Studio, and includes treats like JBoss Seam which is a GUI version of QBF but on steroids. David Turner from our Luminary division built a JBoss Seam version of the Ingres Frequent Flyer demo, which looks fantastic, and is written in such a way that you’ll be easily able to follow what David has done and could even use it as a tutorial before building your own applications. Enrico Schenck from our Emerging Technologies Team did a really tremendous job of papering over the seams between the technologies and supplying everything you need to quickly get started. Rico was also responsible for developing the Ingres Database Workbench which is also included in the bundle. As with all products developed at Ingres there’s a huge team involved in their delivery, but I thought that the outstanding work that David and Rico did was worth highlighting.

Our New Economics of IT message stresses the importance of embracing open standards. This bundle enables developers to do exactly that on a set of proven technologies that we know can scale from the developers desktop to the enterprise data center. Writing portable, standards based applications has many benefits including being able to deploy the application on the most suitable technology stack from a price or performance perspective. Avoiding vendor lock-in on the technology side has the added benefit of putting the budget holder in a stronger position when it comes to negotiating with technology vendors.

It is my firm belief that companies that encourage innovation during a difficult climate will emerge from this economic downturn in a stronger position than their competitors who bury their heads in the sand and hope to get through it unscathed. Open source technology providers, like Ingres and Red Hat, who enable and encourage this innovation will be the trusted partners that these companies will look to in the future. They will take the place of proprietary vendors who not only encourage technology lock-in they have in some cases exploited this position by raising prices in a climate when many are struggling to keep the lights on.

A new addition to your bookshelf?

Emma McGrattan — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:58:13 +0000

I first started using Ingres 20 years ago next month and over the years have built a collection of well-thumbed Ingres books. It has been almost 15 years since a new title dedicated to Ingres has been added to my collection. It’s hard to live up to expectations that have gestated for so long, but a recently released bookabout Ingres authored by Rick van der Lans, a world renowned database expert, managed to not just meet those expectations but to far exceed them. You can preview and order the book on-line at:http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/the-sql-guide-to-ingres/6608333

Rick invited me to write the foreword to the book, and I was honored to be considered for this task. Below is a snippet taken from that foreword

“After two decades working as an Ingres user and as a member of the Ingres engineering team, I believe myself to be an expert on the technology inside and out, but in reviewing this book even this old dog learned a few new tricks. Rick’s broad and extensive knowledge of relational database technologies affords him the ability to provide a fresh perspective to topics that those of us who have been singularly focused on Ingres perhaps take for granted.

It is easy to write SQL, and even easier to write it poorly. This book provides the reader with an understanding of the SQL language and of the Ingres technology that will enable them to avoid common mistakes and to write efficient and well-performing SQL.

This book will serve as an educational tool to novice Ingres users as well as to those who have worked with many generations of the technology. The book contains numerous meaningful examples and hands-on exercises that clearly illustrate the preceding topics and aid the reader’s comprehension.

I was honored and delighted to be asked to provide the foreword for this book, and I hope that you will find the book to be as insightful and as educational as I did.”

A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the White House

Emma McGrattan — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:17:15 +0000

Earlier this year the BBC reported that Sun co-founder Scott McNealy had been asked by the Obama Administration to prepare a paper on open source. In an interview with the BBC McNealy said that he wanted to ensure the government does not get “locked in” to one specific vendor or company and is quoted in saying “The government ought to mandate open source products based on open source reference implementations to improve security, get higher quality software, lower costs, higher reliability - all the benefits that come with open software.” Given the recent announcement of Oracle’s intent to acquire Sun I wondered how a meeting between President Obama and McNealy might play out. Scott is known for delivering somewhat amusing top ten lists to get his point across, so I’ve taken the liberty of creating one for him.

Top 10 Ways the Oracle Acquisition of Sun Helps Government

10.Replacing free MySQL database servers with Oracle Standard Edition at $47.5k per CPU will definitely start money moving in the economy.

9. One of the failing banks could be salvaged to specialize in funding Oracle purchases.

8. Oracle can teach the government a thing or two about raising taxes when people are least receptive to it. Just last year when CIOs were crying that they didn’t have any money the Oracle Tax was raised by 15-20%.

7. With the margins Oracle plans to make on Sun hardware we can afford to package future products in a Cadillac Escalade and alleviate the automotive crisis while still making a profit.

6. Allowing a handful of technology companies to consolidate the technology industry in the same way that the auto makers did the US automotive industry should be just as effective.

5. Even the Republicans agree that Linux and MySQL are unAmerican.

4. Bidding for government contracts can now be streamlined to consider only those vendors that can provide the complete solution from the hardware and storage up to the user interfaces.

3. The fact that 18 out of 20 failed banks ran on Oracle is purely coincidental.

2. Java will move from an “open source” to an “open wallet” model and given its pervasiveness will get everyone spending again.

1. Forget waterboarding; the Oracle sales team have torture techniques that are far more effective and a lot less controversial.

I would love to hear from you if you have something to add.

Has this pig got Swine Flu?

Emma McGrattan — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:36:46 +0000

I’ve mentioned in the past that I am a big fan of what MySQL has achieved, and how they were a proof point for us when we decided to contribute Ingres to open source.

I was just reading a rather discouraging article in The Register about a couple of Oracle Execs trotting over to Sun for a townhall meeting with the Sun employees as is standard practice during acquisitions. As a somewhat impartial observer even I was depressed by the tone of the conversation around MySQL Couldn’t Chuck have put some lipstick on the pig, or does he believe that its got swine flu?

I was amused to receive a reminder over the weekend for the on-again-off-again Oracle Vs MySQL TCO webcast. I’ve decided to tune in anyway and see how they handle it.

Control-Z

Emma McGrattan — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:02:50 +0000

I was disappointed to recieve an email from Oracle, just moments ago, announcing the cancellation of their MySQL bashing webcast next week as it had promised to be the hightlight of my week. Ever the optimist I’m happy to see that Oracle is at least watching what we’re up to at Ingres and acting on the contents of my blog

Tune in early next week for a fun new blog pertaining to Scott McNealy and President Obama.

An own goal for Oracle?

Emma McGrattan — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 13:48:56 +0000

In my blog about the Oracle acquisition of Sun, earlier this week, I predicted that Oracle would mount a sales campaign to move MySQL customers with transactional applications to Oracle. I was amused to receive an invitation from Oracle last night to a webcast titled “Lower Total Cost of Ownership with Oracle: Comparing Oracle to MySQL” You would think that they would have the decency to wait until the deal had actually closed before alienating the MySQL community

No doubt the webcast was scheduled before Monday’s announcement and someone in Oracle’s marketing department will be punished for the own goal today, but it should be interesting to hear how they position this now. Tune in next week for an update.

A Ray of Sunshine?

Emma McGrattan — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 21:10:53 +0000

I didn’t think anything could lift my mood on this cold and gloomy Monday until I heard that Oracle was to acquire Sun. My immediate thought, albeit selfish, was that this was fantastic news for Ingres. I suspect that Oracle sales reps will push MySQL users who have transactional applications toward the free Oracle Express Edition, and from there they’ll be pushed to the Standard Edition and the price tag that comes along with it. Ingres is now the obvious alternative for these open source proponents, and we are being handed an incredible opportunity.

Oracle is the anathema of the open source database community. I remember in the day or two after we announced our plans to open source Ingres back in 2004, we met with Marten Mikos, who welcomed Ingres into the open source community and said that MySQL wasn’t in a position to do damage to Oracle, but that we were, and that he would support our efforts to do so.

I suspect that projects like Drizzle will also benefit tremendously from today’s news as open source community members jump ship to other open source projects related in some way to MySQL. Drizzle takes MySQL back to its roots, both technologically and philosophically and will appeal to many of the MySQL community developers.

I’ve been absent from my blog for a while because I’ve been out on the road preaching our New Economics of IT message. This message has resonated with a variety of audiences from technicians to IT decision-makers, and I believe that after today it’s a message that will resonate even more. To boil the New Economics of IT message down to its barest essence, it highlights the importance of embracing open source, an open architecture, and open standards to avoid vendor lock-in and to provide for predictable, scalable pricing in the uncertain times ahead.

The CIO who a few years ago decided to strengthen his bargaining position by choosing separate vendors for his development tools, middleware, database and operating system/hardware technologies now faces the prospect that Oracle can apply the screws and—with their reputation for being able to draw blood from a turnip—he may be forced into a position where he has no choice but to make decisions that will impact the long-term viability of his business in order to be able to pay the bills.

It will be interesting to watch this drama unfold. Tune in regularly for updates and share your thoughts below.

Beauty in Simplicity

Emma McGrattan — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:31:50 +0000

You may have seen in the press today that we’ve added an Enterprise Content Management Appliance to the Icebreaker family. For the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with our appliances I thought I’d take to my blog today to explain them to you.

There’s an obesity epidemic in the modern data center. General purpose operating systems have become so bloated with features that often times the system, network and security administrators need to work in concert to install, configure and secure new operating system deployments. Software applications have been overstuffed with esoteric features used by a small percentage of their user base, if at all, and the cost of this bloating and complexity is paid not only in increased license fees, but also in the high cost of deploying, configuring, securing and maintaining these applications. It’s time to get back to basics, trim these technologies down to the bare essentials, and simplify deployment, configuration, maintenance and security. The Ingres Icebreaker family of Software Appliances are designed to do just that.

So, what is a Software Appliance? A software appliance is a pre-integrated set of technologies, installed, deployed, configured and maintained as a unit, providing an IT service or solving a business problem. Each layer within the software appliance is trimmed to the bare necessities, and tightly integrated with the adjacent layers. If we take as an example the operating system layer in the software appliance, it will open only those ports required by the applications above it, will be preconfigured with the only the essential user accounts and will start only those demons and services required to support the solution. It is estimated that use of software appliances can reduce the size, cost and complexity of the solution by as much as 70% while at the same time significantly increasing security. The Icebreaker applainces are designed for flexibility and can be deployed on the bare metal, in a virtual machine or in a compute cloud and provide significant improvements in hardware utilization, flexibility, simplicity and efficiency.

The Icebreaker Software Appliances provide many tangible benefits for IT, ranging from simplicity, security and simplified and flexible deployment to improvements in efficiency and cost savings.

Simplicity: Stripping the layers in the appliance down to the bare essentials greatly simplifies the solution; in addition, the software appliance providers take responsibility for the integration of the various components within the appliance, removing the guess work as to what versions and patch levels of the technology stacks are required. The setup process for the Software Appliance installs and configures the complete set of technologies as a single unit, and maintenance is provided for the entire solution, not for the discreet technologies within the Software Appliance.

Security: One of the benefits of stripping the components within the Software Appliance down to just the necessary functionality is that there’s less risk of exposure to security vulnerabilities and the task of securing the environment is greatly simplified. Removing extraneous components, removes the security risks associated with those components. The Software Appliance opens only the ports required by the solution, creates only the necessary accounts and only starts the services and demons required by the applications within the Software Appliance.

Flexibility: Software Appliances are designed from the ground up to take advantage of the latest advances in hardware and while many Software Appliance providers can deliver their solutions preinstalled and configured on a particular hardware configuration, the typical Software Appliance consumer would rather deploy it on a hardware platform of their choosing. Flavors of the Software Appliance are optimized for deployment on the bare metal, within a virtual machine or within a compute cloud.

Efficiency: Recent advances in hardware technologies have significantly increased the computing power available to IT, but the CPU needs of applications hasn’t increased at the same pace, resulting in CPU utilization rates dropping to an all time low. The combination of Software Appliances and Virtualization Technologies enables IT to increase their CPU utilization rates, by deploying multiple Software Appliances on a single server.

Cost Savings: Since they are supplied as a unit, Software Appliances greatly reduce the cost of installing, configuring, deploying and maintaining these solutions. The Icebreaker Appliances have no upfront license fees, instead the consumer can choose to pay for a support subscription.

Software Appliances Vs Software Stacks

The popularity of the LAMP stack makes it obvious that there’s an enormous appetite for integrated technology solutions. Where the LAMP stack disappointed was that the task of keeping track of release and patch levels was onerous and in many cases was offloaded to companies such as SpikeSource. The Icebreaker Software Appliances remove that requirement, and the maintenance stream includes maintenance for all of the components within the solution, pre-tested and certified in our labs.

Summary

The Ingres Icebreaker Family of Appliances are designed to reduce the cost and complexity of deploying software solutions. The Software Appliances take a holistic approach to delivering, deploying, managing and maintaining the solution. The technologies are seamlessly integrated and are delivered, deployed, managed and maintained as a unit. I truly believe that there is real beauty in the simplicity of the appliances; take for example the single click/schedulable backup of the appliance, or the single click updates. Furthermore, Ingres is the single source of support for the entire solution incorporated in the Icebreaker Software Appliances, and we will work with the various component providers, behind the scenes, to quickly resolve customer reported issues.