Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DeWitt Clause, or can you benchmark %database% and get away with it

cube.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 93 posts

Re: DeWitt Clause, or can you benchmark %database% and get away with it

#81

Post by Xelbair »

RedShift1 wrote: post #77

Having only cursory experience with Oracle databases (as in install and run some queries and that's it), is there any advantage to them over MariaDB or PostgreSQL? Better development experience, easier to tune or no tuning necessary, anything that makes it worth over the free database servers?

As someone who worked with Oracle DB for a quite some time.

Stay as far away form it as possible. It only exists to milk already 'captured' companies, and all competitive niche advantages it had were slowly taken over by postgres.

Re: DeWitt Clause, or can you benchmark %database% and get away with it

#82

Post by native_samples »

chmod775 wrote: post #8

It would be quite refreshing if we could have a story in which Oracle are the good guys for once. I'm sure they are at least purchasing some modern-day 'indulgences' by - for instance - donating food to starving north korean elites?

They've done a lot of good stuff with Java.

Re: DeWitt Clause, or can you benchmark %database% and get away with it

#83

Post by Xelbair »

eastbound wrote: post #66
rckoepke wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you pirate the database, then hide behind the fifth amendment to not reveal that you're a pirate while simultaneously asserting that you never agreed to any EULA? I'm not sure what the legal rights are here. I'm certain someone in say, China or Russia, could pirate the database and run benchmarks on it with no repercussions. Surprising that this isn't a business model for an overseas technology analyst firm.

The Fifth only protects the innocents. It’s a fun twist of this amendment - if you are guilty you do not have a right to keep silent.

and in any sane legal system you are innocent until proven guilty.

Re: DeWitt Clause, or can you benchmark %database% and get away with it

#84

Post by mindslight »

rckoepke wrote: post #4
igorlukanin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think someone from Oracle would be more informed on that matter. JK. On a more serious note, who would dare to displease a multibillion corp with hundreds of lawyers (without being backed by a similar co & lawyers)?

Could you pirate the database, then hide behind the fifth amendment to not reveal that you're a pirate while simultaneously asserting that you never agreed to any EULA? I'm not sure what the legal rights are here. I'm certain someone in say, China or Russia, could pirate the database and run benchmarks on it with no repercussions. Surprising that this isn't a business model for an overseas technology analyst firm.

It's much simpler than that.

Person A installs database on a shared or to-be-sold computer, requires a license for the installation process to make a copy, "agrees" to EULA.

Person B then runs benchmarks on said computer, which does not require a license because no copy is being made, and publishes the results.

The only flaw in this is that Oracle will send its mafia enforcers to break your kneecaps despite not having a valid legal case. So you'll lose even if you technically can win.

Re: DeWitt Clause, or can you benchmark %database% and get away with it

#85

Post by giancarlostoro »

zasdffaa wrote: post #76
giancarlostoro wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This just in Oracle legal team takes down entire Tor Network" Jokes aside, I'm surprised they're so touchy about these things. They can make plenty of money without it, they can also save plenty of money with less lawyers.

If rationality was always used we wouldn't have had Putin making a gigantic, catastrophic geopolitical mistake. A little common sense goes an awful long way, but only if you choose to use it. MSSQL is destroying its own market by its pricing (and the licensing thicket, jesus christ, I've been looking at them for 2 days now and... shudder )

Used to just use PostgresSQL on Azure just fine. I am really surprised people use MSSQL or Oracle today honestly. You really don't need to tie yourself down to a proprietary DB anymore.

Re: DeWitt Clause, or can you benchmark %database% and get away with it

#86

Post by tetha »

Beltalowda wrote: post #41
danielheath wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a smaller/younger SAAS: If a customer environment is suddenly running at 100% of some resource when it wasn’t before, that’s an important thing to alert on / investigate. For established players it’s lost in the noise, but if it were me I’d appreciate a heads up for big changes.

Sure, a heads-up is certainly nice, but I don't think that running a (reasonable) set of benchmarks is all that out of the ordinary, or any different from just taxing the service at 100% with some periodic batch job or the like. Paying for it is even stranger IMO. And for what it's worth, I did actually work for a few small SaaS businesses, but a few reasonable benchmarks wouldn't have been a problem. Of course, if y…

These specific customers were not reasonable though. They wanted to specifically know when and how the software breaks, because they had been burned by previous vendors. Eventually sales reacted with a rather frustrated "then pay us 10 engineering days so we can setup a dedicated system for this so you can run your tests" and instead of cancelling the deal, they were like "Ok. Here you go, let's go"

And naturally, they were able to break it eventually, but they could have had all global employees trigger request 10 times per second and the system would've held and it recovered as soon as the load was gone. It was a silly deal, but now it's a great business partner.

Re: DeWitt Clause, or can you benchmark %database% and get away with it

#87

Post by tetha »

RedShift1 wrote: post #77

Having only cursory experience with Oracle databases (as in install and run some queries and that's it), is there any advantage to them over MariaDB or PostgreSQL? Better development experience, easier to tune or no tuning necessary, anything that makes it worth over the free database servers?

About 10 or 15 years ago, OracleDB was years and years ahead of other databases. They had better replication, they had a better query optimizer, they had better storage management. OracleDB was the big thing you wanted in a business for a reason.

However, by now, MariaDB and especially PostgreSQL have caught up so much that this edge is gone and it feels like they are just siphoning money from companies who have invested in their big oracle cluster years ago. I do veto any new oracle-first or oracle-only development at work.

Re: DeWitt Clause, or can you benchmark %database% and get away with it

#88

Post by cauefcr »

geocar wrote: post #65
Nextgrid wrote: post #7

If you want to benchmark for internal reasons you don't publish the results and nobody knows. If you want to make a service to the community, run your benchmarks, download Tor and publish the results anonymously. I don't see what the big deal is? Is this only limited to marketing claims where you post it on your company's website?

> I don't see what the big deal is? The big deal is that it's slanderous. Oracle isn't making an attestation about performance that the benchmark addresses, the benchmark aims to make statements about Oracle for some other reason , and that's important: Rights to free-speech generally end when they cause harm, and bearing full costs in the defense of false benchmarks is certainly harm. Look at it this way: The clause…

And here we can see Oracle lawyers in their natural habitat, spewing bullshit rhetoric to protect them against normal usage of their proprietary software.

Re: DeWitt Clause, or can you benchmark %database% and get away with it

#89

Post by hyperman1 »

RedShift1 wrote: post #77

Having only cursory experience with Oracle databases (as in install and run some queries and that's it), is there any advantage to them over MariaDB or PostgreSQL? Better development experience, easier to tune or no tuning necessary, anything that makes it worth over the free database servers?

As someone who spent some time in Oracle land: MariaDB can't hold a candle to it, but postgresql comes close.

Some things better in Oracle vs Postgres (and I might be dated on my postgres knowledge):. The active/active failover story of Oracle is better with RAC. Auto vacuum horror stories don't exist in Oracle.

Also pro oracle: The 'enterprise' ecosystem is better. Everything enterprisey integrates with oracle, postgresql is still a toss up.

But at the end of the day, I still vastly prefer postgresql. The endless list of weird idiosyncracies and weird limitations in oracle makes you always feel a bit dirty, compared to the relatively clean syntax of postgresql. In oracle land, it is common to wait 1 major version before using new features, because they are unstable when released.

And dealing with oracle support is hell with an additional bonus of pain. They take months for a simple bug fix. They won't admit a bug exists, then call you at 3AM and give you a patch written 2 years ago.

Oracle licensing is a game for advanced poker players. It will be expensive. Then you negotiate, walk away with a 40% discount, making it more expensive than competitors, and find out later it was still a bad deal. They'll interprete standard words like CPU in a slightly different way in their licenses, and finding out in an audit will cost you a lot. Licensing is a never ending drain on your time, and you will loose their games in the end.

Re: DeWitt Clause, or can you benchmark %database% and get away with it

#90

Post by jenny91 »

igorlukanin wrote: post #22
HideousKojima wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just lack of OSI approval, they're attempting to redefine the long accepted meaning of open source to include their new licenses. They want the goodwill of being "open source" without the obligations. The only sorts of licenses that have consistently been considered open source are either copyleft licenses like the GPL and do whatever the hell you want licenses like MIT and Apache. Do whatever you want... unless…

Makes sense! Will edit when I'm next to my laptop, I promise.

Thanks!

As you say in that section, "Open source licenses usually grant users permission to use open source software for any purpose." These source-available licenses (SSPL/BSL) are not open source exactly because of that: they place restrictions on users from using the software for any purpose. For example in the case of SSPL, it includes purposefully draconian language in the license that basically means that it can't be used freely to provide a "service". These kinds of "poison pills" obviously stop you from using the software for certain purposes.

Post reply on HN