Relational databases on OS X

O

olof.edlund

Registered
Hi,

I work for a company with a database product. This product is available for many UNIX platforms, but not Max OS X.

We are currently evaluating whether to support OS X with the next release or not. I'm an old Mac Hacker AND and old Unix hacker so I tend to think that OS X are two good things for the price of one.

Anyway, I would appreciate it if you could help me motivate why our product should be ported to OS X.

To avoid making a shameful plug for our product I will not mention it here by name. But just to set the record straight. It is an enterprise strength database with Core SQL-99 support (in the next, soon to come, release).

I welcome Email with insights or questions if you need more information to give a good reply.

Thanks,

Olof
 
PLEASE PORT IT!
OSX makes such a powerful development environment, it's not even funny. If your code already works for UNIX, I bet it won't take you guys more than 2 days to get it to work in OSX [this is a database dameon, right?] If there is a GUI it will take more time than that....but to give an example:

I took the MySQL source code and compiled it for OSX way back in the public beta days before all of these handy installers came around. There was only one line of code that needed to be modified to make it compile.

I currently use MySQL for all of my database needs [which are all web related] but if you can give us something that doesn't use table locking, I'll surely give it a try.

We're a growing community, so response might be slow. But I see very bright future for Apple and the MacOS [motorola recently filed for patents on optical chip technology...hint hint].
 
Hi Fahrvergnuugen,

Thanks for your reply.

The effort of porting the application is not the problem.

The problem is that if we do release our DBMS on Mac OS X we have to support it for a long time to come. That is very expensive and we need a large customer base for that to be profitable.

As far as locking goes. We don't even use locking. The method we use is called optimistic concurrency (transaction handling with locking is called pessimistic concurrency).
 
Definitely port this! You'll find that your support for OSX will bring more people to it and your userbase will grow. We need professional applications like yours ported so that more people will support OSX.
 
Definitely port this! You'll find that your support for OSX will bring more people to it and your userbase will grow. We need professional applications like yours ported so that more people will support OSX.
 
I'm sure you guys will find that the customer base that uses OS X is going to be very wide, and will no doubt grow as OS X matures, UNIX gurus start using it, and new users come to the platform for the ease of use and its stability.

The Mac platform can definitely use any apps it can get, and any support in the form of ported UNIX applications will help secure and widen the support for the Mac platform.
 
If you're already supporting UNIX, it won't be difficult at all to support OSX. I have problems all the time dealing with databases, programming, configurations, etc that UNIX gurus help me fix.
 
I have no idea what your current market share is, but if it is primary IT and webmasters, then it is debatable. If you are looking more for consumers (like competing with Filemaker and Access) then it would definitely be a benefit.

I do not know what kind of technical support you offer, but I think the technical support staff that you have right now (UNIX based, right?), would not have any difficulties switching over to Mac OSX. Hey, your techies may even be able to answer almost any question if they have a Max OSX machine in front of them.

Poll your current customers and see what they have to say about it.
 
Do you currently support Linux too?

I've been reading that companies that currently only supported Solaris and NT have realized that with only a little extra effort that can port their products to Linux and other Unix flavors such as the BSD's and Mac OS X and come across to customers as very progressive, forward-looking, innovative companies.

The image helps sell the boss, and despite the buzzwords, it's still good business sense. =)

-Rob
 
Yes, we support Linux.

Since our product is very portable and exists on many Unix platforms we could probably port it to Mac OS X in about 4 man weeks. Which means that we realistically, with 2 guys on it, could have a test release made in about 3 weeks (from the day we have access to a Mac OS X computer)

But even if the porting effort is easy the testing is murder. Since our product is a database there must be absolutely no doubt about the robustness. For each platform for _each_ minor release we have to do several hundred hours of testing. For a major release the effort is an order of magnitude of that. Then consider the cost for supporting the Mac OS X platform for 10 years.

I posted the same question on www.macworld.com and I have so far received only one response. That might not be the largest forum in the world, but I can't really call it a 'raving success' considering the size of the other threads. :(

I can't really go to my boss and convince him with those numbers.

Many of you have answered that you would like us to port our application but if I read between the lines you say that because you like Mac OS X and not because you, yourselves, need a database for a project that you are working on (except Fahrvergnuugen who expressed an interest in trying it out).

I'm continuing my investigation though. Thanks for all the interest and help so far.

/Olof
 
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