Drizzle (database server)

Drizzle

File:TBD
Developer(s)	Brian Aker
Initial release	TBA
Written in	C, C++
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	English
Type	database management system
License	GNU General Public License (version 2)
Website	https://launchpad.net/drizzle

Drizzle is a database management system forked from MySQL v6.0 by Brian "Krow" Aker to create a database targeted towards the web infrastructure and cloud computing markets.

Uses

Drizzle is targeted at the web-infrastructure and cloud computing markets, "smaller, slimmer and (hopefully) faster version of MySQL". The traditional LAMP (software bundle) stack is a very likely use for Drizzle, replacing MySQL in this case. As many web applications don't use the majority of MySQL's features, Drizzle is a clear cut replacement, running just a simpler product targeted for that market.

Platforms and interfaces

Drizzle, being a fork of MySql v6.0 is written in C and C++. Presumably as a fork, the SQL parser is the same as its parent MySQLs and uses yacc and a home-brewed lexer.

Drizzle is targeted to work on several different system platforms, including Linux (Fedora), Mac OS X, and Solaris.

Features

Drizzle is a stripped down version of MySQL v6.0 and as such is planned to have many common MySQL features stripped out such as;

• stored procedures
• query cache
• prepared statements
• views
• triggers
• grants
• some non-pluggable storage engines

In their stead Drizzle is adding;

• micro kernel architecture, making Drizzle more modular than MySQL
• multi-core optimization (compared to MySQL's potentially lacking multi-core optimization)
• fewer data types
• fewer engines
• less code making for a smaller and potentially more maintainable codebase

Although less of a functional feature and more of a developmental feature, the Drizzle project is being built to remove distinctions between internal and external contributors, allowing for cleaner community involvement.

Support and licensing

Drizzle is GPL v2 and as it has no releases, has no support. Presumably third party supporting companies will arise similarly to support companies for PostgreSQL, and other open source projects.

See also

• Comparison of relational database management systems
• PostgreSQL
• MySQL

External links

• [1] FAQ
• [2] - Brian Aker's "What If?" article on Drizzle
• [3] - Michael Widenius's "What If" article on Drizzle
• [4] - Drizzle homepage