Today, Oracle announced the acquisition of Sun Microsystems. Many developers are now very worried about the future of the ubiquitous MySQL database system which is currently owned by Sun. However, the Oracle acquisition of Sun can only mean good things for MySQL.

Oracle’s primary business is, and always has been, centered around the Oracle database system. From its start as a government contractor, database development means everything to Oracle. While Oracle may have a strong market position in enterprise and government database operations, it is a very minor player as a database backend for websites and has even been passed over by companies like Google for some very large database applications.

Google, WordPress, Apple and Yahoo are just a few of the big names that have leveraged the open-source MySQL database system to dizzying heights. In addition, the majority of database-driven websites are powered by MySQL. MySQL is the database of choice for PHP, Python, and Ruby web developers. Sun Microsystems purchased MySQL in early 2008. It seemed like an odd acquisition to many, but the original MySQL development had been done largely on Sun’s Solaris operating system.

So, will Oracle deep-six MySQL as a competitor to Oracle’s database offerings? Not likely. The types of customers that use Oracle are not likely to migrate to MySQL anytime soon. Oracle provides a tremendous amount of design, development, consulting, and service with its database implementations. In contrast, MySQL users are typically on their own (although paid support is available) and share tips. In addition, Oracle’s database system offers some features that are simply not available on MySQL and for companies that have large investments in Oracle development, a switch to MySQL is not an easy task. In terms of exact features, another open source database system known as PostgreSQL is more similar to Oracle’s database software. In fact, at one time the big Linux distributor Red Hat released Red Hat Database which was based on PostgreSQL and was meant to compete with Oracle and IBM’s DB2 database systems.

Oracle’s ownership of the open source MySQL will simply bolster Oracle’s strength in the database world and give them further mind share amongst open-source programmers, Linux aficionados, and web developers. Note that many young programmers and web developers are not even really familiar with Oracle and they view it as a large stodgy institution a la IBM whose heyday has long passed. With Oracle behind MySQL, more young developers and systems administrators will be in a position to consider using Oracle software when the appropriate circumstances arise.

Also, since 2005 Oracle has owned a key ingredient to MySQL’s success known as InnoDB. InnoDB is a complementary add-on to MySQL which allows MySQL to have “atomic” database actions that are necessary for financial transactions and other situations where multiple database changes need to either succeed or fail as a group. InnoDB comes with MySQL by default and is largely viewed as the superior way to configure MySQL databases.

Finally, there is technology present in MySQL, and which will continue to be improved by the MySQL development community, which will greatly enhance Oracle’s own database software. In comparison with Oracle, MySQL is sleek and operates at a blistering pace with minimal system resources. MySQL has also been scaled by Google and other large organizations to run unified on very large numbers of interconnected Linux and Unix servers. All of these perks can now be folded into Oracle’s database code. And as long as MySQL remains open source, Oracle can feed off the optimizations and innovations donated to MySQL from around the world.

The future of MySQL looks better than ever.

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