How much opensource users have MaxDB?

[Former Member]

Hi,

i'm an openSource user of MaxDB since SapDB 7.3, and i wish to know how much opensource users MaxDB have? and what is the plan of SAP to support the openSource community?

i'm asking that because i use MaxDB in production systems, and i'm worried if i can continue to use MaxDB without any trouble, because now with versions 7.6 and above, we dont have the sources.

[lbreddemann · Accepted solution]

Hi Clovis,

would be really interesting to know how many "out there" actually use MaxDB for their own products.

It would also be interesting why you would get into trouble when you don't have the source code of the DBMS.

As long as I'm with SAP DB/MaxDB I've not seen many contributions from the OpenSource community to the code base. In fact, most questions on the former discussion forum at MySQL that directed into the "development corner" were something like "I downloaded the sources and they did not build - what's the problem?".

I understand that a DBMS is a terrible complex product and it's hard to actually get to the point to understand the code base good enough to develop it further. But beside this, I tend to believe that most people consider it just plain boring to work on stuff like semantic query optimization and the like.

It's pretty much like the theoretic benefit of possibly having the source code to linux available - even if nobody grasps it completely and most users/companies don't have the knowledge to gain something out of it.

So - what is the real benefit to you in having direct access to the source code? What are the changes you developed to it?

See, I'm just curious and don't want to put down anybody using Sap DB/MaxDB in a OpenSource fashion. It would be nice to hear, what other people did with the DB.

I can imagine e.g. that somebody finally decided to actually implement multi-dimensional indexes in order to boost BW performance. Just come out and tell us

KR Lars

[markus_doehr2 · Accepted solution]

I can imagine e.g. that somebody finally decided to actually implement multi-dimensional indexes in order to boost BW performance. Just come out and tell us

Well - for me it would be nice to have access too - I´d like to continue to maintain our internal versions that are used for various (smaller) systems on Solaris x86 32bit. Once I had the code to compile I could nicely checkout and build the newest version without much hazzle. At times of the availability of the sources for 7.7 I even had a 32bit build of it but...

Additionally I would have liked to "port" to SCO Unixware (please, don´t start flame wars on SCO - I know about them) just as personal interest (you know, I have too much free time)

If I knew more about the internal structures I´d certainly like to help with new things also, I dealt quite some time with the code (see ftp://ftp.aubi.de/pub/sapdb/MaxDB/76). It was just so difficult to get all that pascal/C/C++ mix together. I saw, however, that many things changed since (SpeakingOfHungarianNotationForC++Files.cpp, parallel vmake etc.) which I would really like to check, if that would make things easier to understand than before.

Markus

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi, Lars,

i started this thread to know, how many openSource users MaxDB have, and to know because what for example SAP customers can download test and use the version 7.7, and openSource users dont, because, the versions and patches for OpenSource community comes more slow than that for SAP Customers, and with that in mind the OpenSource community dont have a chance to try solve a problem if they occurs without the sources. just wait next realese and pray.

for example see the thread

then, i think that the access to sources, patchs, show for us that SAP like to stay with openSource users, i wish to stay using MaxDB just because its a great and powerfull technology, but to use this in production we must trust that problems can be solved, like we get with old versions, and trust in MaxDB for OpenSource like i'm trusted in past when i read this http://www.sapdb.org/sap_db_FAQ.htm#13 just because this FAQ i started to use SapDB

i like to call more OpenSources users here, to see if i'm alone with this sense, if i'm alone, then i think that is better SAP to put MaxDB with support for OpenSources users that need more responsive times when problems occurs.

best regards

Clóvis

[lbreddemann · Accepted solution]

Hi Clovis,

I'm not into the details very much, but I believe the contract guys are working on something for non-sap-customers.

See e.g. here . (BTW: this is the website of the Open MaxDB Group - might be of interest to you).

Cocerning the use of MaxDB without a support contract in a production environment I understand that you want more safetiness than the forum response times can give you.

The question to me is: will that be something that source code access can give you?

Does sourcecode access reduces the time for the first reaction/workaround?

I believe the answer is likely to be: no.

In the wast majority of problems I had to deal with databases the problems had been solved without even knowing the source code or consulting with somebody who knew it. The whole idea of multilevel support is build on this. (First levels solve everything that is not a bug so that developers can do what they do best: develop and code).

Therefore I get the impression that having access to the code is more a psychological thing than a real benefit.

On the other side keeping the code open puts some restrictions on the development that probably won't pay off to SAP (think of licensed routines etc. that are not GPL).

See, I don't want to put your request down - I just like to understand, what the real benefit of source code access is for you (and the other users of course).

hmm... your first paragraph is a bit odd to me:

> i started this thread to know, how many openSource users 
MaxDB have, and to know because what for example SAP customers can download test and use the version 7.7, and openSource users dont, because, the versions and patches for OpenSource community comes more slow than that for SAP Customers, and with that in mind the OpenSource community dont have a chance to try solve a problem if they occurs without the sources. just wait next realese and pray. 
> best regards
> 
> Clóvis

So, SAP serves the customers that actually pay for maintenance and service better than the ones that get the software for free. Looks fair to me.

And as I already wrote: there had hardly ever been any major bugfix from the opensource community. The community was not outpaced by prohibitive release politics.

To fix bugs like the one you mentioned in one of your earlier forum threads a thorough understanding of the inner workings of the database is necessary. This knowledge won't be gained 'on-the-fly' when you're looking to fix the bug. And who is going to invest a lot of time into understanding some coding that he perhabs never will have to change just to be "on the safe side"?

About the idea of "SAP-Customers testing newer DB versions": well, there surely are some of the SAP customers trying out new releases/build as they are available.

One or two... (I would bet Mr. Döhr is one of them

No, honestly, one of the things about MaxDB Installations is (in difference to e.g. oracle): they are handled as "install-and-forget" setups.

I cannot recall how many messages I worked on where the release in place wasn't even supported anymore.

So to me it does not look like many of them are totally eager to check what the newest version will bring.

Best regards,

Lars