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Database migrator adds open sources

UDACentral MB Foster is supporting new database connections for its UDA Central migration tool, adding targets popular in the open source enterprise community. The additional databases will make let migrating sites make the transition to a LAMP environment -- Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl, one of the top standards of open source architecture for OS, web, database and programming.

UDA Central Workbench and Server now includes MySQL, Ingres, Sybase and Cache support. The latest targets join Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, DB2, Eloquence and TurboIMAGE. The software can move any of these databases' data between one another, using a Java-based facility.

"UDA Central’s newly added databases expand capabilities for customers," said Birket Foster, MB Foster's CEO. "Over the last year, we have seen IT projects within the healthcare industry that needed access to these databases as part of regulatory and business requirements. We wanted to be sure that we were prepared for our customers growing needs to fully automate the hunt, capture and delivery process for this data."

Serving IT needs since 1977, MB Foster has been in the market since two of the newly-supported databases were flagship enterprise products for companies of the same name. During the 1980s and '90s, Ingres and Sybase were among the Big Five of database solutions for large corporations, along with Oracle, DB2 and Informix. TurboIMAGE, while never being offered for sale on its own, was so entrenched in 3000 sites that it took Oracle more than a decade to offer an alternative to the database bundled with MPE.

Ingres has become a commercially-supported open source product, backed by the Ingres Corp., which had been owned by ASK and Computer Associates. The database went open-source in 2006. It also spawned PostgreSQL, evolved from the Ingres project at the University of California. PostgreSQL is the most popular alternative to the MySQL database.

Sybase, which has not released its product in an open-source version, was acquired by SAP in 2010. The deal closed after current HP CEO Leo Apotheker had left SAP.

Cache, sold by InterSystems, is popular in healthcare organizations which have created their own applications. InterSystems bills the product as the fastest object-oriented database. A free download of the database for evaluation -- a feature also offered by Eloquence for its database -- is available at the InterSystems site. In addition to supporting Windows and Linux, Cache is supported on the Mac's OS X version of Unix. Eloquence is supported under Windows, Linux and HP-UX.

Eloquence, which has also been supported UDA Central, has a Personal Edition license option for download that is a "fully-functional version of the Eloquence product with a permanent license at no cost for non-commercial usage." The Personal Edition is restricted to a maximum of two concurrent users and a database size of 50 MB.

MySQL has become a property of Oracle, as a result of that company's purchase of Sun which closed in 2010. The database drives many of the world's top websites, and while it continues to be free to implement in a Community version, Oracle recently made support contracts a required part of the user license.

Both Ingres 10 and MySQLCommunity Server can be downloaded for free use under standard open source GPL licensing. MySQL is also offered in a commercial Enterprise Edition by Oracle, with a 30-day evaluation download. Ingres is supported for Windows and Linux, as is MySQL.

 

 

 

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