Maximising RDBMS effectiveness (2)

Consider Open Source alternatives.

Because of the long traditions of database development the fundamentals are well-understood, standardised and deployed throughout the industry.

As such there is very little risk of looking seriously at open source alternatives to commercial products. When one considers the potential cost savings it should be manadatory to, at least, seriously review the products available through open source channels. This is especially true if the systems you are deploying that, as Gartner Analyst Donald Feinberg said, "do not require high availabily (authors note: ie >=99%) and other mission critical attributes."

Recently Noel Yuhanna, a Senior Analyst with Forrester Research said, "Typically, enterprises can save over 20% or more on database management costs with an open source database." (Note: See a similar comment in article (1) of this short series of notes).

However, the temptation of staff to proliferate new databases because of the 'zero cost misperception of open source software' should be avoided. The only cost you will avoid are the purchase and/or licensing costs. All the other costs associated with deployment will still be borne by the organisation and prolifetation of databases can be expensive and time wasting - as you may discover to your cost.