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IvorySQL: Open-source Oracle-compatible PostgreSQL

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Re: IvorySQL: Open-source Oracle-compatible PostgreSQL

#61
post #59
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also likely in violation of arcane copyright law. The oracle wire protocol includes a handshake procedure that sends a poem in one of the initial messages. It’s untested legal theory whether copying that poem in a new work (e.g. a new driver or compatability layer) would violate Oracle’s copyright on the poem. https://dacut.blogspot.com/2008/03/oracle-poetry.html

Weird, Apple does a similar thing with macOS startup on Intel (and more recently, Rosetta on Linux). If the magic haiku isn’t given the OS won’t start. http://www.rcfp.org/sites/default/files/docs/20120105_202426... is when Apple tried to get the haiku protected as a trade secret Bonus fun fact: Once the “don’t steal Mac OS” kext is loaded, a longer poem is loaded into memory (at least, it was around Tiger): Your kar…

The thing that's "uncool" is that apple bundles their software and hardware together and won't let you buy just one of the two.

Re: IvorySQL: Open-source Oracle-compatible PostgreSQL

#62
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my question. Is it compatible with PL/SQL? And how is the performance?

Somebody makes a Postgres variant that supports not only PL/SQL, but supplies a number of the standard DBMS_xyz packages. EnterpriseDB?

Yes, EDB's Advanced Server provides that: https://get.enterprisedb.com/docs/Database_Compatibility_for... (pp. 30 ff.).

Re: IvorySQL: Open-source Oracle-compatible PostgreSQL

#63
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They haven't hit EnterpriseDB who have been doing the same thing, except not open source, since forever.

To my knowledge IBM's DB2 too has an "Oracle compatibility" switch that makes it also support PL/SQL.

Exactly. db2set DB2_COMPATIBILITY_VECTOR=ORA gives you Oracle compatibility. You can even get MySQL compatibility and I have actually used that once in the past.

Re: IvorySQL: Open-source Oracle-compatible PostgreSQL

#64

I want compatability in a whole different direction. Let's get really crazy and rip the db out from under vendor solutions. Let their app with its compiled in Oracle driver communicate with a Pg server. We'll completely void any support contract we have, but at least we'll be Oracle free! Can you imagine just swapping in Postgres under a Peoplesoft deployment? As long as you don't make me actually attempt it, it make…

Huge benefit of SaaS is it makes the underlining database being used irrelevant.

Re: IvorySQL: Open-source Oracle-compatible PostgreSQL

#65
post #47
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The software license will still stop you from doing that. No business that would need Oracle will run Oracle software knowingly violating the license.

It’s also likely in violation of arcane copyright law. The oracle wire protocol includes a handshake procedure that sends a poem in one of the initial messages. It’s untested legal theory whether copying that poem in a new work (e.g. a new driver or compatability layer) would violate Oracle’s copyright on the poem. https://dacut.blogspot.com/2008/03/oracle-poetry.html

Is an encryption key copyrightable? Or a password?

Is it illegal to recite a copywrited work? Is it illegal to recite a translation of a copywrited work?

Can you copyright a number? For instance, a long binary number? If a piece of code contains a long binary number that it transmits to another device as a raw number, does it matter if the other device can arbitrarily interpret that number as a copyrighted work using SJIS or ASCII or some tortured encoding created just to turn a specific number into a specific copyrighted work? If the number was stored in UTF8 so that each 1 was encoded as 00000001 then decoded to a 1 for transmission, can you really claim any copywrite violation?

And why does my brain waste time thinking up such questions?

Re: IvorySQL: Open-source Oracle-compatible PostgreSQL

#66
post #46
post #13

Wiped out by Oracle's legal team (patents, whatever) in 4...3...2...

How can Oracle do it when they couldn't do it for the Java API?

As a fact, There are 2 ways to “win” a legal Fight, one is to get the desired judgment the other is to make fighting the case prohibitively expensive for the other party

Re: IvorySQL: Open-source Oracle-compatible PostgreSQL

#67
post #35

I want compatability in a whole different direction. Let's get really crazy and rip the db out from under vendor solutions. Let their app with its compiled in Oracle driver communicate with a Pg server. We'll completely void any support contract we have, but at least we'll be Oracle free! Can you imagine just swapping in Postgres under a Peoplesoft deployment? As long as you don't make me actually attempt it, it make…

The software license will still stop you from doing that. No business that would need Oracle will run Oracle software knowingly violating the license.

Please explain which license would be violated?

Re: IvorySQL: Open-source Oracle-compatible PostgreSQL

#68
post #34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that one is for MS SQL Server, not Oracle

It's postgres, but implementing TDS. It is important to understand that the networking is not the server. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabular_Data_Stream I use freetds in many places. https://www.freetds.org/ I don't think that the programming language inside Sybase/Microsoft SQL Server, known as Transact-SQL, has been implemented in postgres, but I could be wrong. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transact-SQL Mic…

> I don't think that the programming language inside Sybase/Microsoft SQL Server, known as Transact-SQL, has been implemented in postgres

You are wrong; from the Babelfish page: “With Babelfish, Aurora PostgreSQL now understands T-SQL, Microsoft SQL Server's proprietary SQL dialect, and supports the same communications protocol, so your apps that were originally written for SQL Server can now work with Aurora with fewer code changes.”

Re: IvorySQL: Open-source Oracle-compatible PostgreSQL

#69
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not clear to me that it really can do that, though. It would seem exceedingly foolhardy to put all your eggs into, what is essentially a compatibility shim layer/plugin, that may or may not actually be compatible with Oracle or all of Oracle. The company behind it also is an unknown (to me at least) - HiGo[1]. So, IvorySQL is FOSS and free (as in beer) - but what happens if some feature doesn't actually work l…

If you want to use this, you will port your code, run your tests, fix an issue here or there as needed, and develop for Postgres for now on. None of those steps is particularly risky. If any of the steps that may fail brings an insurmountable obstacle, you ditch the project and go back to where you started. > People pay for commercial DB's for a lot of reasons - including having someone to call at 3am when things go…

The scale of your operation and license subscriptions matters for the level of support you receive, naturally.

Big Microsoft shops, like state governments routinely have Microsoft staff fly out and work closely to bring new services online, etc. You cannot expect that level of service if you're just paying for a single database instance, of course.

IBM's support is also legendary - you will get a person on the phone at 3am, and even have a service technician onsite in the morning if needed. Personal experience with this one - they'll fly someone in from out of state to replace a hard drive if it means meeting their service levels.

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