Thread: PostgresSQL vs Ingress

I was browsing the net yesterday after reading through the thread on PG
vs Informix and I was curious as to Ingress.

Ingress is also an open source RDBM (and DataWarehouseing) and I'm
wondering if anyone here has anything to say about it. They also offer
community editions but I've not gone to see how much it differs/offers
compared to PG.

I've tried to DL the community edition, but upon log-in, I only get a
blank page. (tried on both firefox and opera)

On Thursday 29 November 2007 21:12, Ow Mun Heng wrote:
> I was browsing the net yesterday after reading through the thread on PG
> vs Informix and I was curious as to Ingress.
>
> Ingress is also an open source RDBM (and DataWarehouseing) and I'm
> wondering if anyone here has anything to say about it. They also offer
> community editions but I've not gone to see how much it differs/offers
> compared to PG.
>
> I've tried to DL the community edition, but upon log-in, I only get a
> blank page. (tried on both firefox and opera)
>

From a technology standpoint, Ingres is top notch, but it suffers from the
same problem as most of the database solutions available; it is corporate
owned/controlled rather than community owned/controlled.

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 01:59 -0500, Robert Treat wrote:
> On Thursday 29 November 2007 21:12, Ow Mun Heng wrote:

> > Ingress is also an open source RDBM (and DataWarehouseing) and I'm
> > wondering if anyone here has anything to say about it. They also offer
> > community editions but I've not gone to see how much it differs/offers
> > compared to PG.
> >
>
> From a technology standpoint, Ingres is top notch, but it suffers from the
> same problem as most of the database solutions available; it is corporate
> owned/controlled rather than community owned/controlled.

I would agree with you on this perhaps 50% rather than 90%.

Being Corporate owned is not a bad thing(tm) for they present themselves
with these differences.

1. Roadmap
--> It's unfortunate, but enterprise customers or even large SMBs want
to see pretty pictures of where/when the features will come in with all
the bling.
--> It provides a feel-good feeling knowing that a big company, after
having paid XXX amount on it, the solution will not die in X number of
years leaving the customer stranded.
----> I've seen this happen and which is what steer the choice

2. Accountability
--> Community Owned/Control = no specific person to sue. (and we all
know how enterprises are sue-happy
--> The want a scapegoat. With Community, who's to be sued? (unless of
course they buy from a company such as MySQL or EnterpriseDB, they can
most certainly sue them for moolah)

I'm fine with it being corporate. It gives me a view of what's there to
come(but I care not about having someone to sue). What I don't like is
the the paid support which I've heard is not up to mark. (and no access
to developers via mailing lists which gets the job done in half the time
it takes to get a support ticket.)

I think this can be answered easily see http://www.postgresql.org/about/history.  Ingres  was postgresql about 22 years ago!

Now We used somthing called Ingres at University (I graduated in 2000) but I've not heard anything about it since and google does not return anything. So we might be talking about different products?

So I'm slightly confused.

Peter Childs

On 11/30/07, Peter Childs <peterachilds@gmail.com> wrote:
>  Now We used somthing called Ingres at University (I graduated in 2000) but
> I've not heard anything about it since and google does not return anything.
> So we might be talking about different products?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingres

Alexander.

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Hash: RIPEMD160


> --> It provides a feel-good feeling knowing that a big company, after
> having paid XXX amount on it, the solution will not die in X number of
> years leaving the customer stranded.

That's a valid concern. Not sure having a roadmap really correlates
with long-term existence, but it's a logical concern for companies.

> 2. Accountability
> --> Community Owned/Control = no specific person to sue. (and we all
> know how enterprises are sue-happy
> --> The want a scapegoat. With Community, who's to be sued? (unless of
> course they buy from a company such as MySQL or EnterpriseDB, they can
> most certainly sue them for moolah)

No, they want someone to call when things go wrong, not someone to sue
or a scapegoat. Please don't perpetuate this urban myth. No companies are
suing Oracle and Microsoft because of their products, and companies have
no expectation of doing so. It might be nice if they did, and some theorize
it would lead to better and more secure products, but the reality is that
with software, you are on your own. Any company telling you otherwise as
a reason not to use open source is lying.


- --
Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
PGP Key: 0x14964AC8 200711300817
http://biglumber.com/x/web?pk=2529DF6AB8F79407E94445B4BC9B906714964AC8
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I found ingres website but no mention of a database system so I though they were something else that had taken on the name.......

The website seams to suggest a RAD development tool and middleware and use other databases underneath.

In short the current Ingres is related to Postgresql like Xorg is related to XFree86 or Ubuntu to Debian but much much much older.

Wikipeadia also suggests a similar relationship between Posrgresql and SQL Server!

I guess this is one of the benifits of the BSD License.


Peter.

Peter Childs, 30.11.2007 14:25:
> I found ingres website but no mention of a database system so I though
> they were something else that had taken on the name.......

http://www.ingres.com/downloads/prod-comm-download.php

Found this using Google ;)

Thomas

On Fri, Nov 30, 2007 at 01:22:31PM -0000, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
> or a scapegoat. Please don't perpetuate this urban myth. No companies are
> suing Oracle and Microsoft because of their products, and companies have
> no expectation of doing so. It might be nice if they did, and some theorize

Indeed, by using the product, companies have explicitly given up the right
to sue over it.  This is the main point of the EULA of most products, and is
one of the strangest things about the computer industry.  No other industry
can get away with producing shoddy products that endanger others, and induce
its users to give up the right to sue in case that shoddiness causes
problems.

The jurisprudence in this area is extremely uneven, too.

But if you think you could sue Oracle Corp -- or even complain on a public
list about how their software ate your data -- and win that fight, I think
you need to have a long talk with your corporate counsel :)

A
--
Andrew Sullivan
Old sigs will return after re-constitution of blue smoke

On Fri, Nov 30, 2007 at 01:25:46PM +0000, Peter Childs wrote:
>
> In short the current Ingres is related to Postgresql like Xorg is related to
> XFree86 or Ubuntu to Debian but much much much older.

Not quite, according to the programmers who worked on Postgres at UC
Berkeley.  While X.org and Ubuntu both took code from the other project,
Postgres was a completely new project, and there is no code shared between
it and Ingres (except to the extent that some of the same coders may have
touched both projects at some time, and each coder has a style).  The
projects both came from the same research lab, is all.

A

--
Andrew Sullivan
Old sigs will return after re-constitution of blue smoke

On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:22:31 -0000
"Greg Sabino Mullane" <greg@turnstep.com> wrote:

> > --> It provides a feel-good feeling knowing that a big company,
> > after having paid XXX amount on it, the solution will not die in
> > X number of years leaving the customer stranded.
>
> That's a valid concern. Not sure having a roadmap really correlates
> with long-term existence, but it's a logical concern for companies.

uh like SCO... you pay XXX and... well the "solution" die.
I thought resilience to management idiocy, financial scandals etc...
was actually a characteristic of mature OS projects.
But yeah clear long-term plans are something to consider, but they
don't look so related with money.

> > 2. Accountability
> > --> Community Owned/Control = no specific person to sue. (and we
> > all know how enterprises are sue-happy
> > --> The want a scapegoat. With Community, who's to be sued?
> > (unless of course they buy from a company such as MySQL or
> > EnterpriseDB, they can most certainly sue them for moolah)

> No, they want someone to call when things go wrong, not someone to
> sue or a scapegoat. Please don't perpetuate this urban myth. No
> companies are suing Oracle and Microsoft because of their products,
> and companies have no expectation of doing so. It might be nice if
> they did, and some theorize it would lead to better and more secure
> products, but the reality is that with software, you are on your
> own. Any company telling you otherwise as a reason not to use open
> source is lying.

It would be curious to see it happening indeed.

--
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it

Ow Mun Heng <Ow.Mun.Heng@wdc.com> writes:
> Being Corporate owned is not a bad thing(tm) for they present themselves
> with these differences.
> ...
> --> It provides a feel-good feeling knowing that a big company, after
> having paid XXX amount on it, the solution will not die in X number of
> years leaving the customer stranded.

Anyone who thinks that's a reason to feel good is living on some other
planet than I do.  Consider that if the company *does* decide to abandon
the product ... which happens all the time, particularly for products
that aren't market leaders ... you are up the proverbial creek with no
paddle.  You've never seen the code and never will.  With an open-source
product, you at least have the option to hire a couple of programmers
and maintain it yourself, for as long as *you* need it.  (Moreover,
there are probably a few other people in the same position as you, whom
you can cooperate with.  Need I point out that this is exactly how the
current Postgres project came to be, ten-plus years ago?)

            regards, tom lane

On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:22:31 -0000
"Greg Sabino Mullane" <greg@turnstep.com> wrote:

> > --> It provides a feel-good feeling knowing that a big company,
> > after having paid XXX amount on it, the solution will not die in
> > X number of years leaving the customer stranded.
>
> That's a valid concern. Not sure having a roadmap really correlates
> with long-term existence, but it's a logical concern for companies.

uh like SCO... you pay XXX and... well the "solution" die.
I thought resilience to management idiocy, financial scandals etc...
was actually a characteristic of mature OS projects.
But yeah clear long-term plans are something to consider, but they
don't look so related with money.

> > 2. Accountability
> > --> Community Owned/Control = no specific person to sue. (and we
> > all know how enterprises are sue-happy
> > --> The want a scapegoat. With Community, who's to be sued?
> > (unless of course they buy from a company such as MySQL or
> > EnterpriseDB, they can most certainly sue them for moolah)

> No, they want someone to call when things go wrong, not someone to
> sue or a scapegoat. Please don't perpetuate this urban myth. No
> companies are suing Oracle and Microsoft because of their products,
> and companies have no expectation of doing so. It might be nice if
> they did, and some theorize it would lead to better and more secure
> products, but the reality is that with software, you are on your
> own. Any company telling you otherwise as a reason not to use open
> source is lying.

It would be curious to see it happening indeed.

--
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it

On 30 Nov, 16:12, t...@sss.pgh.pa.us (Tom Lane) wrote:
>

[Quoting a re-telling of the myth of products living happily ever
after under the control of big companies]

> Anyone who thinks that's a reason to feel good is living on some other
> planet than I do.  Consider that if the company *does* decide to abandon
> the product ... which happens all the time, particularly for products
> that aren't market leaders ... you are up the proverbial creek with no
> paddle.  You've never seen the code and never will.

Indeed. I used to work with a database system which had already
changed ownership at least once, and through a succession of
acquisitions not dissimilar to fish being eaten by successively bigger
fish, with each owner slotting the product alongside some very similar
existing products in their portfolio, the product eventually ended up
being owned by a very large company with a lot of other products on
their shelf (or, if you prefer, a very big fish with a lot of smaller
fish in its diet).

Now, fortunately, I haven't had anything to do with the product
concerned for many years, and although the current owner has a
reputation for supporting stuff over long periods of time, one has to
wonder what kind of support you're actually going to get, whether
there's going to be much new development, or whether the cumulative
effect of the rationalisation process (which saw the little fish all
eaten up) is to milk the existing customers for as long as they can
bear sticking with the product and not migrating to anything else. I
think I'd rather have the source code and a Free Software licence than
an account manager and a corporate roadmap.

Paul

Ow Mun Henq wrote:-
> Ingress is also an open source RDBM (and DataWarehouseing) and I'm
> wondering if anyone here has anything to say about it. They also offer
> community editions but I've not gone to see how much it differs/offers
> compared to PG.
> 
> I've tried to DL the community edition, but upon log-in, I only get a
> blank page. (tried on both firefox and opera)

Our business has been using Ingres since 1990 and still do.
It is a top quality product and we have followed it as it changed to an open source product.
http://www.ingres.com/downloads/prod-comm-download.php

What keeps Ingres in favour here ( amounst the other developers ), for good or bad, is QBF and Vision.
I favour Postgres because of psql and its ease of use in Bash scripts.
I moved to Postgres originally because I the source was available to cross compile libpq to OS9.

Hope this helps.

Allan


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On Fri, 2007-11-30 at 09:33 -0500, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 30, 2007 at 01:22:31PM -0000, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
> > or a scapegoat. Please don't perpetuate this urban myth. No companies are
> > suing Oracle and Microsoft because of their products, and companies have
> > no expectation of doing so. It might be nice if they did, and some theorize
>
> Indeed, by using the product, companies have explicitly given up the right
> to sue over it.  This is the main point of the EULA of most products, and is
> one of the strangest things about the computer industry.  No other industry
> can get away with producing shoddy products that endanger others, and induce
> its users to give up the right to sue in case that shoddiness causes
> problems.

> But if you think you could sue Oracle Corp -- or even complain on a public
> list about how their software ate your data -- and win that fight, I think
> you need to have a long talk with your corporate counsel :)

Well, that was what I was led to believe in talking to some people and
to be truly honest, I've never read the EULA (not in its entirety nor
understanding its implications entirely either)

So, in that respect, I would say I was un-informed. And I take that
back.

In anycase, if all they want is someone to call, then by all means, it's
not a problem. But that's not what I hear/see or rather, not the item
which is steering much of the decision making.

anyway......