And from this email, copied with permission, here's why:

Here's the connection --

You are correct that as an embedded database, Perst is not an Enterprise
database such as Oracle or DB2 and is not likely to serve as the main
repository for a data warehouse or business intelligence system.

However, Perst's high performance, its minimal RAM and CPU footprint, and
its pure Java construction make it an important component in systems that
optimize and manage business intelligence, data warehousing and other
enterprise applications. Its job is typically that of managing metadata or
providing a real-time cache, and the open source Perst plays this role in at
least two high-profile commercial software packages that are critical to
business intelligence and data warehousing systems' success:

* GigaSpaces embeds Perst to provide persistence for applications that
are deployed and optimized using the company's highly scalable,
self-managing distributed solution. Perst's all-Java architecture was a good
fit to provide maximum portability across diverse enterprise platforms, and
to take advantage of advanced Java capabilities. (see
http://www.mcobject.com/pressroom.php?step=3&article=76)

* Wily Technology, a division of CA(NYSE: CA), uses Perst in its
industry enterprise application management solutions to store real-time
event data sent from remote agents, and to create a repository of
performance data, to enable analysis and optimization of enterprise
applications (including business intelligence and data warehousing). Wily
credits Perst with lending a 10-fold increase in data storage performance.
(see http://www.mcobject.com/pressroom.php?step=3&article=72).

(And really, on http://press.teleinteractive.net/oss under "Linkblog" in the
Databases section, you list BerkeleyDB and Firebird -- those aren't exactly
enterprise databases either - BerkeleyDB even bills itself as "The world's
most popular embeddable database engine").

Any chance of the open source Perst joining the open source DBMSs on that
list?

Ted Kenney
McObject
www.mcobject.com

From: Ted A Kenney
Subject: RE: TeleInterActive Network: Perst open source database
Date: 2007 June 6 09:29:36 PDT
To: Joseph A. di Paolantonio

Here's a guide to what's happening in open source business intelligence and data warehousing at the 2007 MySQL Conference and Exposition.

Speakers

• Fabrice Bonan is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Talend.
• Roland Bouman has been awarded the MySQL 2005 Beta Challenge, and the MySQL 2005 Forum Leader of the year.
• Matt Casters is Pentaho's Chief Architect for Data Integration and the founder of the KETTLE open source data integration tool.
• James Dixon is Pentaho's CTO and Chief Geek.
• Virgil Dodson is a Technology Evangelist at Actuate Corporation.
• Victoria Eastwood is a consultant with Infobright Inc.
• Ian Fyfe is currently director of product management and product marketing at JasperSoft Corporation.
• Julian Hyde is Pentaho's Chief Architect for OLAP, and the founder and lead for the Mondrian OLAP project.
• Barry Klawans is responsible for the technical vision and direction of JasperSoft Corporation's products.
• Brian Miezejewski is a Principal consultant for MySQL.
• Lance Walter is Pentaho's VP of marketing.

Sessions

• Leveraging Open Source for Operational Data Integration
• BI4DBAs: Using Pentaho, BIRT, and Eclipse for Monitoring MySQL
• Addressing Data Chaos: Using MySQL and Kettle to Deliver World-class Data Warehouses
• Exploiting MySQL 5.1 for Advanced Business Intelligence Applications
• Web-based Ad-hoc Query and Reporting with Pentaho
• Flexible End-user Reporting from MySQL with BIRT
• Data Compression and Analytic Query for Data Warehousing
• Using the JasperSoft BI Suite for Data Integration, Reporting, and Analysis with MySQL
• Building Scalable OLAP Applications with Mondrian and MySQL
• Embedded JasperSoft for MySQL Inside Enterasys
• Integrating MySQL and JasperReports
• High Performance Data Warehousing with MySQL: Tricks and Tips from the Field

Exhibit Hall

The Exhibit Hall Hours are:

• Tuesday, April 24 - 10:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
• Tuesday Night Reception - 6:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, April 25 - 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

OSBI related companies with booths at MySQL 2007 include Actuate Corporation, JasperSoft in Booth #409, Pentaho, and Talend in Booth #606.

And don't miss the Birds of a Feather gathering (BoaF): MySQL Data Warehousing and BI with Roland Bouman, Matt Casters, James Dixon, Julian Hyde, Brian Miezejewski, Lance Walter, and Nicholas Goodman. The related sessions on GIS, scalability, performance and tuning, clusters, and The Declarative Power of Views, all look very interesting.

See you there.

Are you wondering whatever happened to Sleepycat's Open Source software Berkeley DB developer database since Oracle's purchase ? It is now known as
Oracle Berkeley DB. It still has three flavors:

• Berkeley DB: A transactional storage engine for un-typed data in basic key/value data structures
• Berkeley DB Java Edition: A pure Java version of Berkeley DB optimized for the Java environment
• Berkeley DB XML: A native XML database with XQuery-based access to documents stored in containers and indexed based on their content

It is still open source. Oracle has released it under a dual license. Check out Oracle Berkeley DB site for more information.

Taken verbatim from a PRESS RELEASE sent to us by Andy Astor, President & CEO of EnterpriseDB

EnterpriseDB Closes $20 Million Financing
Fidelity Ventures Leads Series B Investment in Enterprise-Class Open Source
Database Company

ISELIN, N.J., Aug. 1, 2006 - EnterpriseDB, the world's leading
enterprise-class, open source database company, announced today that it has
closed a combined $20 million debt and equity financing. A $16.5 million
Series B venture capital financing was led by Fidelity Ventures, a leading
provider of "Go-to-Market Capital(sm)" to early-stage information technology
and communications companies. Previous investors Charles River Ventures and
Valhalla Partners also participated in the Series B round. In addition,
EnterpriseDB announced that Comerica Bank has extended a $3.5 million line
of credit to the company. To date, EnterpriseDB has raised a total of $28.5
million. The new funds will be used to expand the company's sales and
marketing capabilities throughout the world and to continue development of
EnterpriseDB Advanced Server, the company's flagship RDBMS product.

In connection with the investment, Dave Power, a partner at Fidelity
Ventures who focuses on investment opportunities in enterprise technologies,
will become a member of EnterpriseDB's board of directors. Power also serves
on the boards of leading enterprise open source companies Black Duck
Software and SpikeSource.

"Fidelity Ventures invests in companies that have the potential to transform
large markets and become category leaders. EnterpriseDB, which combines the
advantages of open source software with the ability to run applications
written for Oracle, is disrupting the $13 billion enterprise database
market," said Power. "We see striking parallels here to Linux, an open
source offering that runs applications written for Unix. We're looking
forward to working with the team at EnterpriseDB to capture the huge
opportunity in front of them."

"Fidelity Ventures has an outstanding track record of helping their
portfolio companies to succeed," said Andy Astor, chief executive officer of
EnterpriseDB. "Their investment is a gratifying endorsement of our previous
efforts and our vision, and we are looking forward to working closely with
them to leverage their expertise, resources and relationships to accelerate
our growth."

About Fidelity Ventures
For over 35 years Fidelity Ventures has played a vital role in the
development of more than 100 information technology and communications
companies including GeoTel Communications, Teleport, COLT Telecom, ONI
Systems, WaveSmith, Connected and Airespace. Fidelity Ventures is able to
leverage a unique combination of resources, including a global network of
CIOs and IT executives, to help portfolio companies accelerate their market
entrance at one of the most critical times in a company's life cycle: the
Go-to-Market stage. A traditional fund-based venture firm focused on
financial returns, Fidelity Ventures currently manages more than $800
million in venture capital, and invests in U.S.-based companies out of its
Boston office, and in European companies out of its London office. For more
information, visit

www.fidelityventures.com

About EnterpriseDB Corporation
EnterpriseDB develops and supports EnterpriseDB Advanced Server, an
enterprise-class relational database management system (RDBMS) that is built
on PostgreSQL, the world's most advanced open source database. EnterpriseDB
Advanced Server is compatible with Oracle applications, has the reliability
and scalability necessary for high-volume, mission-critical enterprise use,
and is very affordable. EnterpriseDB has offices in the U.S., Europe, and
Asia and is the world's leading provider of enterprise-class
PostgreSQL-based products and services. EnterpriseDB was founded in March,
2004, and is headquartered in Iselin, N.J. For more information, please
contact (732) 331-1300 or visit

www.enterprisedb.com

An interesting meme seems to be forming. After my post of February 4, "Can Ingres Challenge Oracle for SAP?" and my remark that Oracle may find it worhtwhile to pursue the F/OSS path for even more of the RDBMS technology [Oracle currently offers a free version of Oracle 10g], I came across "Newly free databases validate open source pioneers"

Nowadays, the biggest traditional database companies are making free availability and open source development an increasingly significant part of their product lines. In the latest such move, this week IBM announced it would make its DB2 Express-C package available at no cost, though still under a proprietary license.
-- Newly free databases validate open source pioneers by Jay Lyman in Newsforge

Contrast this with the comment to my earlier post from drady:

As for the F/OSS'ing of Oracle/DB2/SqlServer, would they open enough of the RDBMS to actually be usable? Seems like an opportunity for them to redefine what is an application "option/feature" and what is an RDBMS "option/feature".
-- From drady's comment to Can Ingres Challenge Oracle for SAP

I think that over the next five years, we will see more F/OSS, FL/OSS and even OSS versions of Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server. The model will likely be dual-licensing, plus up-sell of certain features. This process of commodization can only be accelerated by the [re-] entry of Ingres into the database market as a stand-alone, OSS player, as well as the features inherent to PostgreSQL, and being added to PostgreSQL by EnterpriseDB and Greenplum [Bizgres].

Since the OracAlum event with Terry Garnett, we've had a few meetings with Ingres folk. So, the speculation such as the following, that we picked up from our lens is of particular interest to us.

If companies like Ingres succeed, in the end there will not be any single, dominant database for SAP: not Oracle, not Ingres, not DB2, not SQL Server. Which is exactly what SAP would like to see. Too much dependence on a rival like Oracle makes SAP terribly nervous about its account control. Seeing that control split amongst a host of companies is exactly the divide-and-conquer strategy SAP would like to see in its battle royale against Oracle.
-- Can Oracle be unseated as a top SAP database? by Joshua Greenbaum, in SearchSAP.com.

Something of even more interest is what was left out of Mr. Greenbaum's article: there was no mention of the Ingres RDBMS source code being released as open source. As wtih many of the other open source projects started in 2005, Ingres is still formulating its exact strategy, including final licensing plans, building its community and support options. Still, this is a very odd omission.

For those of us who have been around for more than a decade, we remember Ingres as one of the earliest and most powerful RDBMS of its time. It certainly hasn't stood still in technology in the intervening years, though neither has its intellectual sibling, PostgreSQL, nor its offshoots such as EnterpriseDB. This is of even more interest to us because of SAP's BI/DW/DM technologies. An Ingres/SAP partnership would certainly prove more of force in the BI marketplace than the MySQL/Business Objects partnership.

The next few years will be very interesting to watch. Will large, complex RDBMS software become commoditized as other infrastructure is becoming? Will Oracle become an application house, and possibly even make more of its own RDBMS technology F/OSS? I think that is a distinct possibility.

BTW, I tried leaving a comment at the SearchSAP site, but it's "create a handle" requirement is quite broken, preventing comments from being posted.

MySQL gets a push for government adaptation and use. Carahsoft Technology Corp was awarded a GSA Schedule that enables the company to provide MySQL's products and services. The five year GSA contract, GS-35F-0131R Schedule 70, enables the government "the ability to conveniently purchase and deploy MySQL database solutions."

Clarise and I attended the Oracle Alumni event, held at SAP tonight. The speaker was Terry Garnett, the CEO of the new Ingres - the corporation spun off by Computer Associate in conjunction with their releasing the source code for the Ingres database, 2005 November 07. In addition to listening to Terry's talk (not a presentation - no slides, just a conversation with a room full of fellow ex-Oracle folk), we also got to talk with Terry privately as well as with other Ingres attendees: Dave Dargo - CTO, Andy Allbritten - Senior Vice President of Support and Services and Shelley Keefe - Recruitment.

All of this is actually quite new. The company Ingres took possession of the asset Ingres from Computer Associate only two months ago, and they are still formulating many of their strategies. Terry does have an interesting perspective. He feels that the next step for the Open Sorce movement is to become business open source. Just as the PC moved from a hobbyist movement to an ubiquitous technology with multiple, focused business models, Terry sees open source moving from DIY to ubiquitous technologies with multiple, focused business models.

Look for the upcoming podcast of this session. We'll provide a link to it, when it's available.

There will be a podcast of the event a week or so afterwards,
thanks to the sponsorship of John Houghton and MobilecastMedia.
-- email from Dennis Moore, Founder of the Oracle Alumni Group

Ingres is one of the early relational databases. For those who have been working on relational databases for some time, Ingres has a reputation for being a mature database. When Ingres became an Open Source database, it has made the choice for Open Source databases interesting.

Last November, Computer Associates International, Inc. and a private equity firm, Garnett & Helfrich Capital announced a partnership to divest CA’s Ingres open source database unit into an independent corporate entity, Ingres Corporation.

Ingres Corporation also announced its Management Team including the addition of former Veritas Software executives.

Will Ingres be a key force in enabling the enterprise acceptance of Open Source Databases?

Recently, Navica and InterASC teamed up on project where the customer required we use PostgreSQL as a central data warehouse. Clarise pointed out that PostgreSQL lacked essential attributes to be an efficient platform for data warehousing. In investigating alternatives, we discovered Bizgres. Bizgres is a separate distrubtion based on PostgreSQL with the primary purpose of filling exactly those lacks Clarise had highlighted such as table partitioning and bit map indexing, and the secondary purpose of building a BI suite. As we develop Open Source Business Intelligence, we'll be writing posts describing the enhancements that Bizgres is making to PostgreSQL, and compare Bizgres to Oracle as a DW platform.

Technorati Tags: Open Source, Bizgres, PostgreSQL, Business Intelligence, Oracle