May 24, 2005:

EnterpriseDB Releases Public Beta With Enhanced Oracle Support
EnterpriseDB recently released the public beta of their supported PostgreSQL implementation for Windows and Linux (Fedora, SUSE, & RHEL) — including a GUI with connectors for JDBC, ODBC, .NET, C++, PHP, Perl, and Python. This release will include enhanced compatability with Oracle and PL/SQL. [ news.com ]

February 11, 2005:

EMS Releases Free OSDB Management Tools
EMS-Hitech --- through their new SQLManager.net site --- has announced that all lite versions of their products will be available free of charge. This includes administration tools for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Interbase/Firebird.

   

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PostgreSQL 8.0 Released
PostgreSQL 8.0 has arrived with improved transactional capabilities, continuous server backups, server-side Perl scripting, and for the first time a native Windows implementation. Not to mention a newly redesigned website.

December 20, 2004:

Who Will Be Late To "The Party"?
Jay Lyman has a great story at NewsForge on the burgeoning open source database "party" and includes interviews with analysts at Oracle, IBM, Computer Associates, and Gartner .... who mention that "databases [ which ] have been open source since the start may benefit from an evolving, total open source solution."

September 6, 2004:

Apache.org Incubates "Derby"
The Apache Incubator Project has announced the creation of the Derby project, an open source implementation of IBM's Cloudscape embedded Java database engine. Their goal is to establish a JDBC/SQL interface to the Apache HTTP server.

June 16, 2004:

AAIA Would Be The Logical Choice To Jumpstart An Automotive Industry OSDB
An amazing opportunity exists for "someone" to develop an OSDB for independent auto mechanics and garage monkeys.

The Motor Vehicle Owners Right to Repair Act (H.R. 2735, S. 2138) prevents vehicle manufacturers and others from unfairly restricting access to the information, parts and tools necessary to accurately diagnose, repair, re-program or install automotive replacement parts.

The Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (and their companion site righttorepair.org) is supporting a grassroots campaign to ensure open access to automobile computer codes.

June 10, 2004:

LiveJournal Struts Their SQL
LiveJournal — one of the more popular and functional blogging sites — publishes their source code via CVS at livejournal.org under the GPL. They also provide SQL scripts and in-depth review of their database schema, including tutorials on building front-ends in Flash, ASP, Python, ColdFusion, and more.

March 30, 2004:

Open Source Vulnerability & Security Collaboration Database
The Open Source Vulernerability Database is currently in late beta testing for their new security bulletin database promoting collaboration and vendor-neutrality. They have provided a visual diagram, scripts, and exports for their database schema, will be allowing 3rd parties to integrate the database into their own products, and should have an XML interface going in the near future.

OSVDB also supports Nikto, an OS/GPL'd command-line tool for finding security holes in your web server and CGI programs.

March 27, 2004:

OpenOffice: Datasources in 5 minutes
Mike Weber of FedoraNews shows us how to configure database access for OpenOffice.org (in 5 minutes). Currently "OOo" has built-in datasource hooks for MySQL, JDBC, ODBC, dBase, ADO, CSV, and Mozilla (yes, your bookmarks, browsing history, address book, and inbox should all be chalked up as "open source databases"). The native PostgreSQL driver should make it into the next release.

March 22, 2004:

John Cox / Upcoming OSDB Features
Linux Insider's John Cox on many of the new enterprise-level features upcoming in Firebird, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

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Lessig / Open Source Business Conference 2004
... and Lawrence Lessig had this to say at last weeks innaugural Open Source Business Conference ... "We need to reorganize the debate (in Washington) to make sure it's about freeing the creative potential of innovators which will translate into enormous business opportunities". [ via sfgate.com ]

March 19, 2004:

Infoworld / Federal OSDB Migration
InfoWorld reports that federal IT departments are "outgrowing Unix" and migrating to lower cost Linux solutions with open development models.

"Many are migrating off Unix-based Oracle databases to Linux running on Intel servers. Also, within smaller agencies, Web-based applications development is increasing with the MySQL and PostgreSQL open source databases."

Another article by Grant Gross discusses the open source database potential at the U.S. Department of Labor, the U. S. Treasury, and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

March 8, 2004:

AMR Research has just released a report entitled Open Source Databases: Widespread and Mainstream by 2006 noting that traditional database vendors have failed to lower prices while feature enhancements have slowed or lack real demand. They forsee that "early roads to adoption [with OSDBs] will lead to competitive advantage within the next 12 months" and provide a list suggestions for preparing your open source database strategy in anticipation of this shift.

March 1, 2004:

The Dell Linux Community Web's What's New Blog is a great way to stay current with the latest developments in low-level RAID and hardware support for Linux. A specialized whitepaper announcement section contains links to Linux-centric documents from Dell's Power Solutions magazine.

"Dell and Linux: where low-cost and standards-based hardware meets low-cost and standards-based solutions."

February 19, 2004:

EMS Hitech has released <a href="http://www.ems-hitech.com/pgmanager">version 2.2 of PosgreSQL Manager for Windows</a> which includes user interface upgrades, new reporting features, and bug fixes.

February 16, 2004:

The Nonprofit Open Source Initiative (with a grant from IBM) has just published "Choosing and Using Open Source Software: A Primer for Nonprofits" as a PDF on their website. It contains a good introduction to the world of Open Source for decision makers, several case studies, and a total cost of ownership worksheet.

While in the 1980s and 1990s most small-to-medium sized nonprofits managed to get by with donated, "borrowed", and 5-year old copies of software products, new approaches to licensing and copy protection are bringing an end to the era of "free" proprietary software.

Skip to page 18 for a list of ideas your organization can use today or add yourself to their OSS Nonprofit directory

February 14, 2004:

Stephen Bell: "three flagship applications, entrenching Linux even into organizations whose management may see them as Microsoft shops, are the Apache web server, the database system Postgres and Samba"

February 8, 2004:

Mark Stone on open standards-based software: "Because no single company owns the software, the options for support will always be competitive."

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An Alpha release is now available for MySQL Administrator. This looks to be a quantum leap in usability from previous MySQL client interfaces and has both Windows and Linux distributions. Check out the screenshots!

February 2, 2004:

A recent report from eWeek's Lisa Vaas is aimed at those who need to decide between PostgreSQL and MySQL and discusses features, performance, and support.

The OSDB Directory