Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Is EnterpriseDB Express Gone?

I was at the EnterpriseDB web site recently and noticed that the downloads have changed a bit. I no longer see a download for EnterpriseDB Express. If you remember a while back, I had found an annoyance with the installation of the express version.

Now you go right to the advance server download and get a messsage.

You have downloaded EnterpriseDB Advanced Server. Currently, EnterpriseDB Advanced Server 8.2 requires a Product Key in order to use the software above 1 CPU, 1 GB of memory, and 6GB of data. This product key will be removed from future releases of EnterpriseDB Advanced Server.


The message also provides a license key so that you can install the software. Kudos EnterpriseDB. I appreciate it. I'm not opposed to an express version. Actually, I think it makes a lot of sense. But before implementing it, the software should be able to limit itself.

It looks like that's what they plan to do.

I also noticed a new feature/offering. EnterpriseDB now offers a Developer Support Pack.

Need some help getting started with EnterpriseDB Advanced Server? Sign up for 6 months of technical support today for just $99. This Developer Support Pack is to be used for development only and not for production implementations.


That is an incredibly reasonable price for a developer to get up to speed. I didn't read the details but if that allows a developer access to phone support, $99 for half a year can't be beat.



Wednesday, October 3, 2007

EnterpriseDB Wins One From MySQL

Do you do GEO? If you do, you've probably at least heard of PostGIS, the Postgres GIS extension. PostGIS just gave EnterpriseDB a big win over its open source competition.

FortiusOne leads the market towards the next generation of Web mapping. Its breakthrough Intelligent Mapping technologies offer rich information visualization on maps and unprecedented access to geographic data. FortiusOne innovations include: high-speed Web-based geographic analysis tools, a flexible and scalable Web services platform supporting the special needs of geographic data, and an innovative application of social networking techniques to geographic knowledge creation.

FortiusOne's main product is GeoCommons. GeoCommons houses a large geospatial database with more than two billion attributes, 35,000 variables, and 1,500 datasets. As a fast-growing startup, FortiusOne required a low-cost, powerful database solution to run GeoCommons. Originally, FortiusOne selected MySQL; however, when FortiusOne was preparing to deploy the first public beta of GeoCommons, they encountered major performance roadblocks.



FortiusOne has migrated GeoCommons from MySQL to EnterpriseDB Advanced Server and improved overall system performance by 80%.

“We slammed into a brick wall with MySQL,” said Chris Ingrassia, chief technology officer, FortiusOne. “As an example, MySQL’s rather limited and incomplete spatial support dramatically impacted performance. We were looking for an affordable database solution, but we required enterprise-class features and performance that MySQL simply couldn’t deliver. Plus, philosophically we want to support open source-based technologies like EnterpriseDB.”


The PostGIS geospatial extensions to PostgreSQL played a key role in FortiusOne’s selection of EnterpriseDB Advanced Server, a PostgreSQL-based solution, and dramatically improved performance. FortiusOne needed to run complex spatial queries against large datasets quickly and efficiently, and found the MySQL spatial extensions to be far less complete and comprehensive than PostGIS. EnterpriseDB Advanced Server processes some of GeoCommons’ database-intensive rendering requests in one-thirtieth of the time required by MySQL. During peak loads, GeoCommons processes more than one hundred thousand complex requests per hour, requiring true enterprise-class performance and scalability.

“EnterpriseDB occupies that crucial middle ground between MySQL and Oracle,” continued Ingrassia. “EnterpriseDB is priced competitively with MySQL, but provides significantly better performance and advanced features you just don’t find in most open source databases.”


You can get additional information about GeoCommons at the GeoCommons FAQ. Checkout some cool screenshots at the FortiusOne screenshot page.


Software Blogs - Blog Catalog Blog Directory Software blogs Top Blog Sites Blog Flux Directory Lewis Cunningham