1 Introduction
With the rapid growth of MySQL in the database market, many corporations, government agencies,
educational institutions, and others have begun to migrate away from their expensive and proprietary
databases. Of course, a migration from any database is not something to be taken lightly, and so
countless organizations are considering their options for migrating to MySQL.
In particular, many MySQL customers are migrating from Oracle because they have reached the
conclusion that the combination of cost-savings and feature set of MySQL make for a compelling
business case to offload some or all their database-driven applications to the MySQL database
server. This paper provides insight into what is needed for considering a move from Oracle to
MySQL, and presents a number of options that help make the transition easy. Both the business and
technical sides of migrating to MySQL will be dealt with, so whether you are a manager or a seasoned
DBA, you will find the needed answers to questions that revolve around migrating to the world’s most
popular open source database - MySQL.
2 Why Migrating from Oracle makes Good Business Sense
Before making any large-scale commitment to a technology, modern enterprises must look beyond
the technical promises software vendors make and first consider the business side of acquiring a
technology. While each business follows its own methodology for approving the deployment of a
given piece of software, the core set of factors that normally govern acceptance are calculating the
total cost of ownership and validating the viability of the software vendor.
Let’s take a more detailed look at each of the two factors above and see how MySQL measures up
when it comes to calculating the total cost of ownership of the MySQL database server, as well as the
current health of the company that stands behind that database.
2.1 Measuring the Costs of using Oracle vs. MySQL
One of the driving factors that can be attributed to the huge popularity and adoption of open source
software in business today is the dramatic cost savings that accompanies owning such software.
Given that many large Global 2000 enterprises spend between $500,000 and $10,000,000 in annual
costs for new licenses and existing maintenance for proprietary database software, MySQL becomes
an incredibly attractive alternative as most companies find they can slash their costs some 80-90% by
using MySQL for new application projects as well as upgrading existing systems to use MySQL in
place of its more expensive and proprietary alternatives.
Such license and maintenance cost savings are amplified when businesses find they must scale their
applications to meet higher user demand. For example, a recently published study by database
industry guru Charlie Garry compared the cost of deploying Oracle RAC and MySQL and offered the
following insight:
“Oracle has encouraged its customers to scale out through its RAC approach.
Although there are technical pros and cons to using RAC, one important consideration is the
additional cost. Since RAC is an additionally charged item, and since the majority of RAC users
also purchase the data partitioning feature to help with scaling, the cost per additional processor is
$85,400 including license, support and mandatory upgrade fees. To put that in context, for every
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suzg1102012-09-18不错，但是英文的
