MongoDB worth double, Oracle biggest hero!

Andrew C. Oliver is a seasoned software advisor and started programming at the age of eight, starting with GW Basic, BASICA and dBase III +. His POI project is now hosted on Apache. He was a former JBoss developer until JBoss merged with Red Hat, while Andrew C. Oliver was an early director of the Open Source Initiative and now chairman of Open Software Integrators. Andrew C. Oliver recently published an article on InfoWorld to take stock of the current state of the database and analyze the reasons for the rise of MongoDB.

The following is the translation:

Not long ago, 10gen, the owner of the MongoDB Document Type Database, renamed the MongoDB Document Type Database to MongoDB Limited. Recently, some $ 231 million invested in NoSQL, the first $ 1 billion startup, and its market value suddenly rose to 12 One hundred million U.S. dollars.

MongoDB was founded in 2007, but it took only six years to reach that level, and it took 20 years for the well-known open source company Red Hat (founded in 1993) to achieve that result. Compared with the two phases, JBoss, which has harvested less than 20 million U.S. dollars and sells for less than 400 million, has achieved good results.

So what's the biggest contributor to MongoDB's success? The answer is undoubtedly Oracle! Database giant Oracle has been using the industry as its cash machine, taking the lion's share of the $ 30bn market. In 2011, Oracle's RDBMS license revenue once reached 16.75 billion US dollars. Through the well-known analysis company Gartner learned that Oracle in the RDBMS market share of 48.3%, well-deserved database giant.

Traditional giants Oracle's stance

Oracle has many advantages, a large and reliable user base, and many applications use PLSQL for storage. Comparing all the databases when using HP / UX PA-RISC hosts in the mid-1990s, Oracle is not fundamentally different. In fact, there has not been much change since the 1980s. This can be said that the advantages and disadvantages coexist, Oracle requires a lot of hardware, requires a lot of operation and maintenance personnel support. And when the scale reaches hundreds or thousands of terabytes, its cost is not affordable by the average organization.

Want to scale in such a scale, Oracle need to do the underlying software architecture changes. Oracle solved this problem by adding other technologies, as the previous article said - it was tantamount to nailing a goose on a Mack truck called an airplane. In addition, such an extension also requires a completely different licensing model. This is difficult to achieve without changing the existing market model.

At the same time, Oracle is also a strong merger in the database market. First, it acquired a portion of MySQL (which includes InnoDB's storage engine), followed by Sun, and Sun recently captured the popularity of MySQL, the open source database, shortly after Sun's acquisition. The role of this acquisition is evident in the competition with challengers such as IBM and Microsoft; however, the acquisition of new technologies poses numerous problems.

NoSQL destructive new sports

The history of technology is also a sabotage: Microsoft ruined Novell in the 1990s, and Apple is also undermining Microsoft. First, there is a need for an absolute use of the environment; at the same time, its technology or cost structure can not be rapidly changed to adapt to new markets. It's like Aztecs: great for the environment, but it's down to exotic diseases, under the Spanish firearms. Successful saboteurs use the weaknesses of traditional businesses as a weapon, while also belonging to a new technological environment. The saboteurs here are a factor in change, not in the technical and business environment.

MongoDB is such a technology. The reason MongoDB became popular not only because it is cheaper than Oracle, but also because it is convenient to add nodes to a cluster, is very much in line with the industry's shift to virtualized networks, storage and cloud computing. Extend Oracle Requirements Combine, configure and integrate multiple complex technologies (RAC, DataGaurd, GoldenGate, etc.) and more hardware, which will use more licensing and professional services expenses. At the same time, Oracle's solid position is the perfect target for MongoDB. Instead of chasing the individual characteristics of different competitors, MongDB only has to choose against a very large target.

Build the next generation of databases

MongoDB has been in use for years with Open Software Integrators, and its simplicity and adaptability have been proven, with ease of scalability being unprecedented. If you still use Oracle, these systems simply can not be achieved. We started by worrying about the reliability of MongoDB, whether it would be acquired by Oracle or Computer Associates - becoming more complex and expensive, leaving most of our customers' favorite competing.

A billion-dollar valuation and an investment of 231 million U.S. dollars basically allow us to dispel this concern because, after MongoDB was acquired, the acquiring party must have taken great care of the company. More likely, then, MongoDB targets the IPO. Obviously MongoDB is now firmly established, and it is impossible for Oracle to ask MongoDB for the purchase price, except that Oracle has the determination to eliminate the entire document database system. If that were the case, incumbent MongoDB investors would certainly sell off their shares and switch to another technology or a similar one, such as the popular MairaDB after MySQL was acquired.

Compared to Oracle, MySQL is easier to use, maintain and install, but does not mean that it has better performance. Typically, only 10 times more improvement will undermine the entrenched competitors. MySQL is a simple and cheap relational database, but its performance is slightly worse. However, MongoDB can do 10 times performance beyond, although not all scenarios, but once used as a long-term option.

This $ 231 million investment and virtualization, big data and cloud technology trend has brought MongoDB money and soil to redefine the database market. Now Oracle has been forced to respond and defense, a similar situation we have seen in Microsoft's body, but the effect is obviously not obvious. Well, perhaps Ballmer is not the last CEO to be fired.