Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people
archives.postgresql.org
archives.postgresql.org
Hopefully SalesForce will contribute its improvements back to the PostgreSQL community.
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[1] For example, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4400797
Here is my predictions: Salesforce is will start investing into new technologies and building cool stuff. However, that will not look good on stock price because R&D costs will skyrocket - and our "efficient" stock market does not like long term visions. The stock price will collapse. The board will panic and Larry will "save the day".
And duplication of products was never a problem for Larry: he just kills the one with less customers. For example, in case of BEA and Oracle Application Server: BEA WebLogic replaced Oracle Application Server. In this case, in case of acquisition, Oracle cloud offering will be replaced with Salesforce.
So i do not think you are right about the stock market. The stock market apparently sees something that the accounting numbers do not show.
It's a steaming pile of poo. SOQL is really terrible and don't even get me started on apex, it's like someone took all the worst bits of Java and made them into a programming language. It's really slow to boot, I was using it with a client last week and it was taking 10-20 seconds to load any page.
I also really don't get how they're not making more money given the prices they charge.
Expect nothing at all out of them.
Also, it is highly entertaining that most PostgreSQL news here tend to dwell to MySQL.
PostgreSQL is quickly becoming the main go-to alternative for people who are obsessed with the hip-now shiny thing. These are some of the same folks who will mindlessly advocate zsh over bash, tmux over screen, htop over top, and ack over grep.
And htop is really nice.
Nice sound bite but PostgreSQL (as we know) was first released around 1996.
In my experience, everyone who tries PostgreSQL loves it and sticks with it. That doesn't make it a mindless choice, or the "hip-now shiny thing." It does mean that Oracle's decisions are encouraging people to look at alternatives, and that the alternative is, in fact, often better than what they're currently using.
It's unfortunate that your second paragraph is either trollish or ill-informed. Sure, there is a part of group-think about Postgres' popularity in some communities, but Postgres has a number of advantages over MySQL (though I'd say MySQL has a better multi-server story). Implying this plays little part in its growing popularity is condescending.
There seem to be lots of projects at SFDC that could be supported by Postgresql. It's going to be great though, considering the community might get some great tools from this.
Perhaps the person writing the job ad was embellishing by calling it a major piece of the core database infrastructure.
[1] http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/salesforce-orac...
> to say nothing of the merits of mvcc
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I have seen a database that uses an SQL-like language but it is not a RDB. It's said to be much faster than Oracle, but it certainly doesn't need the SQL syntax to work. Needless to say, the speed doesn't come from the SQL syntax. :)
It made me wonder about decoupling the language from the interpreter. Without the SQL characteristic, would anyone be attracted to the MySQL, PostgresSQL, ..., WhizBangSQL systems?
But does it necessaruly tell you anything about the underlying structure and the performance of a database?
If we drop that acronym, "SQL", and still provide a database that handles relational queries (but perhaps uses a different but equally capable language), does that matter? If yes, how much? And why?
One of SQL's remaining powers over most other options is the ability of non-expert users to construct their own ad-hoc reports. This is a big part of why Hadoop has Hive, which incorporates a very SQL-like language, and most other "big data" tools have something similar.
the value of the different database implementations comes from how efficiently they can implement the relational model, and what optimizations they have to support particular use cases, or extensions to make supporting and maintaining them more practical. those optimizations/extensions also lead to some of the differences between what sql might be if it were "purely relational" and what is is in practice.
so dropping sql and using a different language would be more a nuisance than anything. what is important is whether the database is relational or not. and databases that are not relational have been tried - they are (misleadingly!) called "nosql databases" (they should be more accurately called "non-relational databases", of course, given the above).
Are they gonna hire them all :))) I bet most of their hires will be ppl who never touched pgsql
I don't use Oracle (my customers tend to be budget conscious). Even without Oracle experience it makes some real sense to whenever possible use free software if the total costs of software development, deployment, and maintenance are less - assuming equivalent functionality, scalability, etc.
Hopefully if Salesforce switch they will develop some form of Postgres clustering solution which would be great for the Postgres community, as an active-active clustering solution with the characteristics of RAC would make Postgres even more competitive in the enterprise.