Sun Celebrates Third-Party MySQL Storage Engines: Oracle, Kickfire, PrimeBase Technologies and Infobright Join Sun in Supporting the World's

SANTA CLARA, Calif. (Business Wire EON) April 15, 2008 -- Sun also helps promote these third-party solutions to its MySQL database customers and open source community through a range of co-marketing activities.

"MySQL's innovative and modular design allows users to mix-and-match specialized database engines depending on their applications' needs -- providing optimal performance and functionality, while avoiding an inefficient 'one-size-fits-all' approach that can lead to complexity and bloat," said Zack Urlocker, VP of Products, Database Group, Sun Microsystems. "Our certification program gives community- and partner-developed engines an equal footing with the software that our own engineers build."

The following database engines are a part of the certified partner program:

InnoDB

Developed by Innobase OY, a subsidiary of Oracle(R) Corporation, InnoDB is the most popular transactional database engine for MySQL, with integrated support for crash recovery, row level locking, and referential integrity for MySQL applications. Sun distributes and supports InnoDB in both MySQL Enterprise and the MySQL Community Server. Innobase is a MySQL Enterprise Platinum partner and a Gold Sponsor of the 2008 MySQL User Conference.

An early-adopter version of InnoDB Plug-in for MySQL 5.1 (announced at the conference), is available under the GPL open source license and can be downloaded for free at http://www.innodb.com/support/downloads and the MySQL Community Software Forge at forge.mysql.com/projects/storage_engines. The new InnoDB Plugin for MySQL allows MySQL users to dynamically load a new version of the InnoDB storage engine into the MySQL server for greater performance, flexibility, reliability and ease of use. The InnoDB Plugin for MySQL introduces data compression and the ability to quickly create indexes, among other important new features.

Heikki Tuuri, the founder of Innobase and chief architect of InnoDB, said, "InnoDB is well-known for being fast, reliable, and proven. With the release of the InnoDB Plugin for MySQL, we are supporting MySQL's pluggable storage engine architecture, and demonstrating our on-going commitment to the MySQL community."

Kickfire

Kickfire provides the first high-performance, easy-to-use database appliance for the burgeoning MySQL market. Based on a patented SQL chip that packs the power of tens of CPUs into an exceptionally small, low-power form factor -- Kickfire delivers a quantum leap in performance efficiency avoiding the hardware build out, power, and space costs of today's data warehouse and database offerings. By delivering astoundingly fast query performance out of the box, Kickfire enables organizations to use MySQL for demanding business intelligence, reporting, and analysis rather than migrating to costly, non-open source alternatives. Kickfire appliances scale from gigabytes to terabytes and are based on commodity hardware and Linux. They leverage existing storage as well as the openness of MySQL and its entire ecosystem to provide compatibility and rapid deployment.

"MySQL's pluggable storage engine architecture, ease-of-use, and market leadership were the primary reasons Kickfire selected MySQL as our appliance platform," said Raj Cherabuddi, CEO, president, and co-founder of Kickfire. "MySQL's data warehousing capabilities and broad tool support, combined with the stellar query performance of the Kickfire storage engine and SQL Chip, will bring a unique enterprise-class business intelligence solution to the fast-growing MySQL data warehousing market."

PBXT

PBXT is a highly-scalable, transactional storage engine for the MySQL Database Server. The product is sponsored by the open source company PrimeBase Technologies (www.primebase.org), a MySQL Platinum-level Partner. With a "write-once" log-based architecture, PBXT is ideally suited for Solid State Drive technology (SSD). Key features of PBXT include: Fully ACID compliant, MVCC (multi-version concurrency control), foreign key support and streaming of media data including video, audio (e.g. MP3), images and other binary large objects (BLOBs) with the MySQL Database Server.

"As the first pluggable storage engine to come out of the MySQL community, PBXT is already an important part of the MySQL ecosystem," said Paul McCullagh, CTO of PrimeBase Technologies. "MySQL's pluggable storage engine architecture is a true case of 'the whole is greater than the sum of the parts', and we are pleased to be able to contribute."

Brighthouse

With its Brighthouse solution, Infobright has fundamentally reinvented data warehouse architecture. Brighthouse represents a departure from other data warehouse solutions that require building and maintaining data partitions and indexes, or investing in large hardware systems. In sharp contrast, Brighthouse achieves breakthrough performance -- particularly for highly complex, ad-hoc queries -- with its flexible, patent-pending Knowledge Grid and integrated Optimizer.

"A key part of our strategy is developing winning partnerships, and the pairing of MySQL and Infobright provides a powerful combination that brings together best-of-class solutions," said Miriam Tuerk, president & CEO of Infobright. "The open source database know-how and market presence from MySQL combined with Infobright's domain expertise and market-leading position in analytic data warehousing will enable our customers to easily access an offering that is quick to implement, easy to scale and deliver a rapid time-to-value. We are proud to be recognized as the first data warehouse provider to be named a MySQL Storage Engine Partner and look forward to driving additional value to our customers."

In addition, MySQL offers a number of its own storage engines, including MyISAM, Cluster, Memory, and Archive. Falcon, MySQL's newest transactional database engine, is being designed for large-memory, multi-threaded and multi-core CPU applications such as high-volume Web sites. There is also a new experimental crash-safe version of MyISAM being developed under the code-name Maria. Falcon and Maria are available now in special preview versions at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads.

Many MySQL users and customers have developed their own custom database engines for their specific application requirements. The MySQL Web site provides resources and documentation at http://www.mysql.com/engines.

About Sun's MySQL Database

MySQL is the most popular open source database software in the world. Many of the world's largest and fastest-growing organizations use MySQL to save time and money powering their high-volume Web sites, critical business systems, and packaged software. At http://www.mysql.com, Sun provides corporate users with commercial subscriptions and services, and actively supports the large MySQL open source developer community.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision -- "The Network is the Computer"(TM) -- Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, MySQL, and The Network is the Computer are registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems in the United States and other countries. ORACLE is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation.