Ingres Offers Open Source 4GL

by Mike Gunderloy - May. 22, 2008Comments (3)

With the open-source database market split between quite a few contenders, the ones who are not at the tip of everyone's tongue need to find ways to distinguish themselves. Ingres - the once closed-source database that was spun off from Computer Associates a few years back - continues to aim for the high-end corporate market. Their latest move in this strategy is the release of substantial portions of their OpenROAD 4GL as open source under a GPL license.

The exact definition of 4GL has been a matter of debate, but generally speaking tools that are optimized to quickly crank out "line of business" applications fall into this category. OpenROAD fits here: it's designed to hook up an Ingres database to a user interface through the use of objects. What distinguishes development environments like OpenROAD from more general IDEs is their focus on letting you work as much as possible in the business realm instead of with the nuts and bolts.

Traditionally, 4GL development has been viewed as less than exciting by much of the development community - though it's been a source of great revenue for firms that have specialized in banging together business applications quickly. By open sourcing its efforts in this area, Ingres is obviously hoping to combine the benefits of open source with the need of consultants to pick a language. For example, the fact that OpenROAD cannot now simply vanish makes it a more viable choice for firms that are figuring out what to bet their future existence on.

Interestingly, Ingres is not just opening its own code here - it's also working with some of the other companies who have developed OpenROAD enhancements to get those opened up as well. This is a new twist on putting together an open source community: convincing your business partners to come along, in the hopes of attracting more end users. As with its other products, Ingres offers a commercially-supported version of OpenROAD as well, providing a clear upgrade path for developers who decide to learn this tool - as well as a revenue source for the company.


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3 Comments
 

It is interesting to see how the open source database realm evolves. First there were a few big companies, then a bunch of open source companies came along to target essentially non-consumption and started disrupting the big players (not that Oracle had not sped this up). Then Oracle and Sun and company started hoovering up the smaller guys. Now some of the old guard are going Open Source and trying to get the others to join in. Should be interesting to see how this project really does, and whether any new adopter will go for this or the more battle-tested MySQL with Sun's support or Sleepycat with ORCL.

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As a systems specialist on a large installation utilizing Ingres technology I've read this article with interest, but have to bring into question the validity of saying that Open Road has gone open source.


My understanding is that the only open source aspect of OpenRoad is the development environment (IDE), not the runtime component. When installing the Empire (OpenRoad) source code you have to agree to two licenses, the first being pretty standard GPL stuff, while the second one is a 'Trial and Developer License'. This effectively limits what you can do with the 'open source' product to development and trial installations, suddenly open source OpenRoad isn't as open source as it sounds.


While a developer can freely develop applications, they still cannot be deployed unless you wish to buy a runtime license at a cost of $200 per seat. Not a minor consideration or cost when you support a few thousand users.


Until/unless Ingres truely open source OpenRoad and provide an open source runtime environment this development means very little and will do nothing to increase the usage or penetration of Ingres.


0 Votes

Ingres and other database vendors will need to look at ways to attract Open source applications to put their databases. Otherwise they are not going to get any popular.


Creating tools in one way to attract potential open source developers. However if the tools aren't open source then they will back away from using the database in favour of MySQL or PostgreSQL.


0 Votes
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