MySQL Growth in the Database Market

MySQL can be used 64,000 different ways with just about any type of database. Despite this flexibility, here is how I see the growth of MySQL in the database market:

• Web-based applications are an area of strength for MySQL. MySQL will continue to grow and remain popular in this space.
• Data Warehousing is the big potential growth area for MySQL. In the next few years it will be very interesting to monitor MySQL in the data warehousing market. Fast reads, large horizontal scalability and strong yet relative low-cost solutions make MySQL ideal for data warehousing.
• OLTP is an area that MySQL works well in for small and medium sized solutions. MySQL version 6 is where MySQL can grow significantly in the OLTP market. The Falcon (OLTP) storage engine, designed for modern large memory and multi CPU systems, increased on-line functionality and improved high availability offers significant potential for MySQL in the area of OLTP applications. MySQL version 6 will make MySQL more popular in the on-line Internet database market. You can also expect Oracle (InnoDB) and other 3rd party companies to also offer new scalable OLTP storage engines in the next few years.

The future looks bright for MySQL. It's interesting to look at the database market. It is Oracle and MySQL that are growing in popularity that can be used in multiple platforms.

• DB2 is typically an IBM solution.
• SQL Server is typically a Microsoft or low-cost simple solution.
• Oracle and MySQL are the two database solutions that are popular with multi-platform solutions. HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, Red Hat, SuSE , Windows, etc. are all strong and popular solutions for both Oracle and MySQL. It is only Oracle and MySQL that continue to remain popular on multiple platforms.

Oracle will continue to dominate the large aircraft carrier database solutions and the business applications market. SAP will continue to try and use DB2 and SQL Server with their business applications and use Oracle only when they have to.

As for the web-based applications, small/medium data warehousing applications and small/medium OLTP environments, MySQL will continue to grow in popularity.