EnterpriseDB set to battle MySQL, Oracle

EnterpriseDB at the LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco on Tuesday intends to take on MySQL and Oracle in the database market with a product built on the PostgreSQL open source database.

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The company bills its EnterpriseDB 2005 database as an enterprise-class offering that is compatible with Oracle and says it is superior to the open source MySQL database. Applications written for Oracle will run unmodified on EnterpriseDB 2005.

“The fact that EnterpriseDB can work with an Oracle environment without touching the application, I think, will appeal to a lot of customers looking for an open source database,” said Noel Yuhanna, senior analyst at Forrester Research.

A representative for MySQL, meanwhile, said MySQL doesn't see EnterpriseDB in competitive sales calls.

EnterpriseDB 2005 runs faster than most other databases in typical transactional applications and has a low defect rate, according to EnterpriseDB.

EnterpriseDB 2005 features an RDBMS engine and EDB Studio, which is a console for developers and database administrators. Also featured are connectors that offer access to the database from JDBC (Java Database Connectivity), ODBC (Open Database Connectivity), .Net, Perl, Python, and other technologies.

While available free for evaluation, development, and low-volume deployments, EnterpriseDB is priced at $1,000 per CPU per year for the company’s Silver-tier pricing level. The Silver tier features update and patch service, unlimited e-mail and Web support, and business-day telephone support.

The Gold-tier option, priced at $3,000 per CPU per year, includes faster responses for e-mail support and round-the-clock telephone support. A Platinum tier, which costs $5,000 per CPU per year, features perpetual licensing, a designated account manager, intellectual property indemnification, and on-request production tuning, EnterpriseDB said.

EnterpriseDB also will announce it is leading the development of a PostgreSQL community committee to build ANSI-standard stored procedures and triggers for PostgreSQL. The company also plans to contribute to the PostgreSQL code base, in areas such as multimaster replication.