The acquisition of MySQL by Sun caused a frisson of excitement in the database industry last week. It was not just the sum of money involved, but the fact that Sun had been so clearly supporting PostgresSQL before the deal.

It makes sense for Sun to have a product like MySQL in its stable, though one wonders whether the sudden acquisition was to forestall an attempt by Oracle to buy it. The product has a large and comparatively faithful user-base; the database is greatly improved now, and less eccentric. The only problems are caused by its current management, who will now be able to retire to the beach whilst the Dome-heads of Sun clean up the product. Most importantly, it is the missing component in Sun's Open-source stack, and will look particularly good with the open source application server Glassfish.

One wonders what Sun will do to the product. Will it re-write it in Java, as it did to ACS? Will it straighten it out to be nearer to the ANSI standards? Will it scrap the messy dual license in favor of a GPL?

It is fascinating to see how Sun's three open-source databases, (Derby, Postgres, MySQL), will be positioned, and what will become of PostgreSQL now it is no longer a strategic requirement for Sun to support it. PosgreSQL is likely to thrive now the umbilical chord with Sun has been cut. It is much more of a true Open Source application and too anarchic an organization for any of the Big Fish of the IT industry to gobble up.

It would seem likely that the vast base of LAMP users (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) will be gently seduced into the Solaris camp, and the Open Source die-hards will look at SQLite and wonder why they haven't been taking it more seriously.