As Captain Kirk says in Wrath of Kahn, the word has been given. But I am not talking about "Warp Speed".
When evaluating expansion of systems and adding a database server for a new application, the question of money was, inevitably, raised. Other alternatives to Oracle Database were evaluated.
MySQL, which sells for $5K per server (mainly for support), won out over Oracle, which sells by the CPU and was quoted over $100K. So now we are moving this new app to MySQL, even though we are an Oracle shop (SQL Server was not considered by the powers that be, BTW).
What this means is that I will be learning MySQL so that I can write the stored procedures. This will also require me converting PL/SQL stored procs and packages to MySQL. I will be documenting my findings here as I progress.
Interestingly, after the decision was made and purchases made, we discovered Enterprise DB, a MySQL competitor that is going after the Oracle market by placing an Oracle-like layer over PostGres open database. Enterprise DB claims that Oracle PL/SQL can be used with little or no conversion. And the price is comparable to MySQL, which, essentially is near-free. (can any commercial company compete with this freaking business model?)
Has anyone else used Enterprise DB?