Drizzle makes MySQL lean, mean again
The Drizzle project is taking the massive MySQL Linux community back to the land of lean, mean database servers. They've trimmed the code to less than half, removing some 600,000 lines of code.
When I first heard of the Drizzle project, I was definitely a sceptic, but the more I read, the more I find to like.
What is Drizzle?
It's a fork of the MySQL database server takes it back to its roots as a lean, mean database for web applications, stripping out a lot of the new features added in MySQL 5, and a lot more besides.
Where MySQL went wrong
I used MySQL in a number of projects around the turn of the decade, but I stopped using it shortly after I discovered PostgreSQL, a more advanced open-source database server. PostgreSQL has long supported a number of the features that MySQL added in version 5, and I still think it implements them much better, but the extra functionality is a double-edged sword, since it's more complex to configure and maintain than MySQL.
The problem is that MySQL, too, is becoming more complex to configure and maintain. After years of adding so-called enterprise features in an attempt to match more advanced databases like PostgreSQL and Oracle, MySQL has drifted away from the small, simple, web-focused database it once was, disappointing a lot of its users in the process.
You don't often see this with open-source projects, but MySQL's a bit different, since it's almost entirely written by its in-house developers, who can direct the project as they see fit.
Bye-bye to 600,000 lines of code
Drizzle is tackling these issues head-on. The developers have a very clear plan: reworking the whole code base to eliminate the unnecessary and poorly-implemented features that have built up over the years. They've trimmed the code to less than half, removing some 600,000 lines of code.
This is no bedroom coding project
Perhaps just as importantly, they've adopted the GPL as the one-and-only licence for Drizzle, cutting the dual-licencing that kept MySQL's development in-house. While some MySQL developers are working on Drizzle, they're joined by developers from such prominent MySQL users as Google, Canonical, Six Apart, and even MySQL's new parent company, Sun.
What about PostgreSQL?
While MySQL competes with PostgreSQL by aiming for feature parity, Drizzle does the exact opposite -- its developers will happily tell you that if you want advanced features, PostgreSQL is where you'll find them.
If you want a fast, lightweight, zero-maintenance database for web computing, though, it looks like Drizzle is going to be ideal.
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