Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people • Hacker News Board

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#51

Post by reuven » Mon, Oct 22, 2012, 5:38 AM UTC

spudlyo wrote: post #42

cs702 wrote: post #15

With Oracle slowly transforming MySQL into a 'free-open-core, closed-outer-shell' RDBMS[1], PostgreSQL is quickly becoming the main go-to alternative for anyone who wants to avoid database vendor lock-in. Hopefully SalesForce will contribute its improvements back to the PostgreSQL community. -- [1] For example, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4400797

Oracle no longer publishing their test cases hardly constitutes "transforming MySQL into a 'free-open-sore, closed-outer-shell' RDBMS", moreover there is no evidence that folks are adopting PostgreSQL because they're afraid of MySQL vendor lock-in. If one feels they must pay from MySQL they can give their money to Oracle, Percona, or MariaDB, all of which whom will happily provide MySQL support for a fee. PostgreSQL…

Many of my clients were using MySQL, got freaked out by what's going on with Oracle, and decided to at least look into PostgreSQL. They were very impressed with what they saw, and in some cases admitted that they should have gone with PostgreSQL from the beginning.

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.

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#52

Post by nnq » Mon, Oct 22, 2012, 5:51 AM UTC

...now if I'd ever use Oracle products and wanted to negotiate a cheaper license, this the type of "news piece" I'd publish! (and it wouldn't even have to be "a lie" people experiment with OS all day since they're hiring "just" "5 engineers" it can be seen as a "small scale" (for Salesforce bien sur...) too)

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#53

Post by rimantas » Mon, Oct 22, 2012, 6:35 AM UTC

darnaut wrote: post #24

cs702 wrote: post #15

With Oracle slowly transforming MySQL into a 'free-open-core, closed-outer-shell' RDBMS[1], PostgreSQL is quickly becoming the main go-to alternative for anyone who wants to avoid database vendor lock-in. Hopefully SalesForce will contribute its improvements back to the PostgreSQL community. -- [1] For example, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4400797

Where's the evidence? The linked source refers to closing test cases, which makes it more closed source, not open core. Also, it is highly entertaining that most PostgreSQL news here tend to dwell to MySQL.

Well to be fair a lot of MySQL related news will have a comment along the lines "try PG, the real database".

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#54

Post by rimantas » Mon, Oct 22, 2012, 6:39 AM UTC

spidaman wrote: post #35

I use MySQL plenty and there's a lot of things I like about it. But I honestly don't understand any of the MySQL related comments on this post. Even if Oracle didn't own MySQL, a migration from Oracle to MySQL is significantly more difficult than one from Oracle to PostgreSQL. The poor join performance of MySQL make it doubtful that it could have ever been a serious discussion at Salesforce (to say nothing of the mer…

  > to say nothing of the merits of mvcc

I want to know more about the merits ov mvcc and why don't they apply to MySQL.

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#55

Post by 055static » Mon, Oct 22, 2012, 7:04 AM UTC

zem wrote: post #45

055static wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious where the most perceived "value" is. For example, is it in the internal structures of the database? Is it in the query language? Is it in the fact that everything is packaged together as a "system"? 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…

what postgresql, mysql etc. provide is a relational database, i.e. a way to store table-structured data with consistency and safety guarantees and efficiently perform operations to retrieve and update rows from it. sql is simply the standard language in which relational queries are expressed.

So the language implies something about the functionality of the database. That seems obvious enough.

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?

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#56

Post by Tawheed » Mon, Oct 22, 2012, 8:11 AM UTC

This is obviously Step 2 of many to wean off of Oracle's hardware, infrastructure and software which Salesforce undoubtedly has been running on since Day 1 but now can no longer afford to do so for strategic reasons.

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#57

Post by hristov » Mon, Oct 22, 2012, 9:24 AM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #16

cs702 wrote: post #15

With Oracle slowly transforming MySQL into a 'free-open-core, closed-outer-shell' RDBMS[1], PostgreSQL is quickly becoming the main go-to alternative for anyone who wants to avoid database vendor lock-in. Hopefully SalesForce will contribute its improvements back to the PostgreSQL community. -- [1] For example, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4400797

And then Oracle will buy Salesforce... Larry did say something like that but he said that the price is too high. 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…

Salesforce is currently trading at sky high prices in relation to their revenues and the fact that they are still losing money on gaap basis.

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.

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#58

Post by lucian1900 » Mon, Oct 22, 2012, 10:09 AM UTC

rimantas wrote: post #54

spidaman wrote: post #35

I use MySQL plenty and there's a lot of things I like about it. But I honestly don't understand any of the MySQL related comments on this post. Even if Oracle didn't own MySQL, a migration from Oracle to MySQL is significantly more difficult than one from Oracle to PostgreSQL. The poor join performance of MySQL make it doubtful that it could have ever been a serious discussion at Salesforce (to say nothing of the mer…

> to say nothing of the merits of mvcc I want to know more about the merits ov mvcc and why don't they apply to MySQL.

Because it doesn't do MVCC, it locks instead.

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#59

Post by seunosewa » Mon, Oct 22, 2012, 10:17 AM UTC

lucian1900 wrote: post #58

rimantas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to say nothing of the merits of mvcc I want to know more about the merits ov mvcc and why don't they apply to MySQL.

Because it doesn't do MVCC, it locks instead.

False. InnoDB does MVCC by default.

Re: Salesforce will hire 40-50 Postgres people

#60

Post by mattmanser » Mon, Oct 22, 2012, 11:58 AM UTC

tlogan wrote: post #16

cs702 wrote: post #15

With Oracle slowly transforming MySQL into a 'free-open-core, closed-outer-shell' RDBMS[1], PostgreSQL is quickly becoming the main go-to alternative for anyone who wants to avoid database vendor lock-in. Hopefully SalesForce will contribute its improvements back to the PostgreSQL community. -- [1] For example, see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4400797

And then Oracle will buy Salesforce... Larry did say something like that but he said that the price is too high. 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…

Have you programmed Salesforce?

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.