Saturday, August 18, 2007

The Market Batteground

Somewhat following on the heels of my post yesterday, Sympathy For The Devil is in the Details, Tim DiChiara of SearchOracle posted The Market Battleground.

Tim mentions that with Oracle's steady lead (41%) in the database wars, maybe Oracle doesn't need to worry. He points out though that microsoft, while enjoying a lower market share, is growing at 28% of over 2005 and may pass DB2 in the market.

Tim didn't even mention open source databases though. Just this week, DBA Village, an Oracle forum/news site, had a poll asking which database most people thought Oracle should worry most about. Now, while this is an unscientific poll and could be impacted by "DB pride", I think it is interesting that the question was asked and that MySQL and EnterpriseDB/PostgreSQL both made the list. That shows that the Oracle community is asking itself if they need to be concerned.

The poll results, by the way, as of tonight, is:

Which database do you consider the biggest threat for Oracle?
With 342 responses so far:

  • EnterpriseDB/PostgreSQL: 34%
  • SQL Server: 28%
  • DB2: 13%
  • MySql: 11%
  • No idea: 10%
  • Other: 3%
These results are not really meaningful in the overall scheme of things but the question is out there. I'm waiting to see how Oracle answers.

LewisC