The acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation has been looming for sometime already. Today, I got email that the deal has been completed. The acquisition would allow Oracle to become a player in the cloud computing business. The merger would deliver various technology innovation with the addition of servers, storage, SPARC processors, Solaris operating system, Java, and the MySQL database. People are wondering why the acquisition keeps silent about the future of MySQL database. Oracle DBMS is sure a state of the art technology, but there might be some hidden agenda behind which relates to database wars.

We know that MySQL open source database has provided end users with a way to avoid expensive database management system license and maintenance fees. It has been a growing database alternative to commercial database systems like Oracle. The number of web applications running on MySQL database is ever increasing. Web hosting services have been offering MySQL database as a standard choice together with PHP application. Also, web application programmers have been comfortable using it in development of web applications. There is even a MySQL cluster offering which is a direct clash with Oracle database. Thus, many viewed MySQL database as a real threat to Oracle.

It’s interesting to know what will happen next to MySQL open source database. Oracle seems to cleverly take out its No. 1 threat by buying Sun Microsystems. I can see that MySQL is in danger with Oracle and Sun deal completed. If there’s an alternative open source patrons would surely choose to avoid Oracle if they can. In the future most likely people will exit MySQL or MySQL will be forked. Or maybe Oracle will put some new technology with MySQL? It’s something to watch out.