Oracle buys SleepyCat
Here’s the news, via SleepyCat’s Blog and Oracle’s press release.
Wow. Crazy. I dunno ’bout you, but I don’t get the warm fuzzies knowing Oracle now owns Berkeley DB. And it gets me thinking about what role Berkeley DB will actually play outside of their current focus on the embedded space.
On the Linux/UNIX front, Berkeley DB is still largely considered to be more difficult to program with than the relational alternatives like, say, SQLite. There are certainly types of apps that fit the Berkeley DB model better than the relational / SQL model, but at this point SQL has so much mind share I’ve seen people running to SQLite in droves where they were using Berkeley DB or NDBM or something before. Subversion is listed as a SleepyCat success story, but for many people Subversion on Berkeley DB has been problematic enough that the Subversion folks went and created their own, simpler backend (FSFS) and it is becoming far, far more popular.
Interesting times ahead for the SleepyCat folks. They’ve certainly got the talent to carry them forward, but who knows what the Oracle mothership might have in mind now that they own InnoDB, Berkeley DB, and TimesTen…
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