I disagree with your comments. Being the original database and enhanced to the level it is Ingres is the most advance database in the market. It has a large customer base who are loyal to Ingres. Running a small website is fine one can use MySQL or anything else for that, but if you are doing something serious, You need a database which is as serious as Ingres. Ingres scales really well, has great backup and recovery, can work on multiple platforms, installs in a flash and the best part is that with Ingres being such a mature product you do not have to worry about stability of the system. MySQL 5 is just coming out with some very important database features which Ingres has had for years. Ingres is the "real" database at fraction of the cost of Oracle, but languished due to lack of promotion. With G&H pumping in so much resources on it, I believe it can be the best out there leaving MySQL far behind.

If Ingres is really the most advance(d) database on the market how come I couldn't find a single person using it? And what makes you think that G&H will put resources into it?

First mover advantage almost always wins with open source...and yet Ingres didn't win, and will likely continue not to.

I disagree with this articles comments and the followup comment made by Dave Rosenberg.

Ingres has been, and continues to be used, in thousands of datacentres all over the world. There is already a significant market share out there that brings in a serious amount of support revenue each year. Much more than MySQl and POSTGRES combined!

(see http://www.ingres.com/customers/ingres%20customers/ for some of Ingres' customer base)

Before Ingres Corp floated, nobody paid much attention to Ingres. Now that it has, the MySQl/POSTGRES advocates of this world are seriously rattled! Why? Because Ingres exposes the fact that their little toy DBMSs are just that - toys! No self respecting Business is going to choose MySQL or POSTGRES over Ingres as their Open Source DBMS.

Ingres has a loyal following in UK, Europe, Australia, Goverment look at http://www.iua.org.uk/index.htm,

If you look at Ingres website http://www.ingres.com/ It is clear G&H has an active interest in promoting it. The executive team is who's who of Database world. It sure costs a lot to hire such a team.

I believe that just by open sourcing a technology does not get a technology going. It needs promotion, books and articles, partnerships, exposure to new techonology and just energy. CA did not get the fire going that well so Ingres suffered.

If Ingres puts active interest to expand and promote their super cool technology, I believe it is only a matter of time when Ingres will catch on with database administrators who have been wanting more sophisticated technology but don't want to burn their pockets in doing so.

I am a CA employee and have previously worked with Oracle Corporation. I was really surprised with the features Ingres has. But unfortunately most of these features are hidden somewhere in the source codes and are not as hyped as the Oracle features. Hopefully with the new turn of events, Ingres will get the respect it truly deserves.

Also Emma and her team are really experienced and equipped to make Ingres a preferred market choice

--- Subu

Back in the 80's before CA purchased Ingres, I was an Ingres DBA for several years. It would run circles around Oracle at the time and had more features and cost less than Oracle. I developed several very complex systems using the Ingres 4GL which are still in use today at a fortune 100 company whose name I won't mention. The Ingres query optimizer was the best in the world at the time. If CA had marketed and supported it properly - Ingres would be the top database and NOT Oracle, but CA did what they usually do and screwed it up.

If I got history correct, Ingres, Postgress, Illustra, Sybase were all built around the same time, basically from the same base. Also remember that Informix and MS SQL Server (Sybase) have the same lineage. It has been reported that the new owners may change the license to "a popular OSI approved license" It is way too early to predict what the future will hold for Ingress. It looks bright to me.

I'm a DBA who has been working on Ingres for 9 years and Oracle for 6 years, Oracle has some good tuning features but you generally need more Oracle DBA's to manage Oracle instances, Ingres is easier to use and administer and they are pretty much on par with features.

As Ingres is opensource, I believe it just needs to be marketed better (as we all know) and thats what G&H will do (hopefully!) companies are constantly trying to cut the cost of IT and Ingres is a dam good alternative to Oracle and DB2 (MySQL and MSSQL is not in the same league)

With regards to Dave Rosenberg comment 'If Ingres is really the most advance(d) database on the market how come I couldn't find a single person using it?' then his searching is very poor, and i'm quite surprised by his ignorance.

Good luck Ingres Corporation!

{Dave responds: I only looked in the US. Seems like most people commenting as users are from int'l locations.}

The University of Washington had been using INGRES since 1989. In spite of the many changes in ownership, it continues to be a great database product. I have also been an Oracle DBA for several years. INGRES performs as well and is infinitely easier to manage. It's also considerably cheaper to use. Had any of INGRES's management been a little more effictive in marketing it, it would be definitely #1.