Response to Oracle comment

[Geoff Davidson <geoff@xxxxxxxxx>]

We feel that it is important to respond to what we consider
uninformed and inaccurate assertions made about the Open Source 
database communities in general, and PostgreSQL specifically. 

We would appreciate your posting this in the same thread as
Ms. Gelhausen's comments under:
     http://forum.icann.org/org-eval/gartner-report/

Respectfully,
Geoff Davidson, CEO
PostgreSQL, Inc.

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Open Source databases have a substantial and rapidly growing share 
across the full range of conventional database markets. This has 
been reported now for several years, including:
"Open Source moves to the mainstream" April 10, 2000
     http://www.informationweek.com/781/open.htm

The suggestion that these databases have been unsuccessful in serving 
the needs of these markets is simply, obviously and patently untrue. 

PostgreSQL offers comprehensive transaction features, replication,
and it integrates well with High Availability, security, and 
administration applications that ensure reliability and durability at 
the enterprise system level.

Information on these capabilities are well documented and can be 
sourced online at:
     http://www.postgresql.ORG 
A not-for-profit PostgreSQL open-source community website.

PostgreSQL supports the majority of SQL-92 standards, as well as a 
large portion of the SQL-99 standards. 

PostgreSQL has always offered user-defined types, and works with 
real-world and real-time objects (in Java, PL/PgSQL, C/C++, etc.). A 
differentiating strength of PostgreSQL is that the majority of the 
extensive language APIs in the libraries are also Open Source, fully 
empowering systems developers to make maximum use of the capabilities 
in all their programs (e.g. Perl, Java/JDBC, C, C++, Python, XML, 
Kylix, ODBC, tk/tcl, Ruby, PHP, Pike, LISP, SQLAPI++, Object Pascal, 
Apache, Coldfusion, Sablot, DOM, XPath, etc.)

PostgreSQL is also highly portable across more than 24 operating 
systems and the majority of hardware platforms.

Unlike many of the conventional commercial databases, PostgreSQL has
offered advanced Object Relational capabilities for years, including
inheritance. Ms. Gelhausen is quite correct that these are important 
capabilities, finally available with the release of Oracle9i. We 
applaud Oracle's continued efforts to close the gap and stay 
competitive with this, and other open source database features.

As with all the mature databases, both open source and proprietary, 
there are a variety of utilities (import/export) and third-party 
applications available to support conversions from most other 
databases. In the case of PostgreSQL, the vast majority of these are 
open source and free to download, and also help support the use of 
PostgreSQL in concert with older existing commercial legacy systems, 
many of whose early version limitations make conversion or migration 
costly and impractical.

The time and place for open source solutions has proven itself to be
now, and that the .ORG domain registry should, above all other 
commercial gTLDs, be one of the strongest supporters, proponents and 
users of these not-for-profit applications.

There are many differences between both open source and commercial 
databases include performance, licensing and cycle fees, hardware 
costs, operating overheads, functionality, support, access to source 
code, ease of migration, scalability, extensibility, upgrades, 
merging & consolidation of multiple vendor databases across versions, 
and more.

While there are many specific and often deliberate differences between
the Oracle9i and PostgreSQL databases, there are many similarities:
- both are readily available
- both support multiple standards (SQL, Unicode, ODBC, ANSI, etc.)
- both perform well when properly installed and tuned
- both offer a variety of management and administrative tools
- both provide a variety of security and control features
- both are supported by most mainstream applications
- both have commercial support programs available
- both have global communities of qualified independent experts
- both have proven stable in mission-critical implementations
- both are mature, well-developed database platforms
- both are object-relational

All the current database contenders are works in progress. Oracle
made a large step forward with their release of Oracle9i, over the
past 16 years PostgreSQL has continued to increase it's 
functionality with regular releases, Microsoft™ SQL Server 2000
added many new capabilities, MySQL has recently added transaction
support, and others are moving to SQL-99 compatibility. Change
is the only constant we should accept, to do otherwise would be
a disservice to ourselves, our clients, and our competition.

It is on the basis of these, and many other considerations of the 
merits of how applications meet the specific requirements in each 
case, that responsible business decisions must be made.