The following was in the just released monthly bug report for the Falcon storage engine:
“With the news that Sun has aggreed to be purchaced by Oracle, Some inevitable changes will occur. Once the acquisition is made, the need for Falcon as a MySQL storage engine will be re-evaluated. Until then, Falcon will continue to improve stability and performance. The team will also evaluate other technical niches that may be unique to Falcon.”
I for one would be very disappointed to see Falcon not supported by Oracle. I know they have worked very hard to create a next-generation storage engine. While it could be argued that InnoDB can fill all use cases, I believe that choices are a good thing and having one less choice is not a good thing.
Good luck all on the team. You have been nothing but kind and generous when answering my dumb questions via email and in person. You can count my vote for “keep it!!”.
Link?
Good question Henrik. It was on the falcon mailing list. The archive of the post is here:
lists.mysql.com/falcon/737
The email doesn’t actually say that Falcon will be cancelled.
In any acquisition, the new owners will evaluate the worth to them of all projects and will decide what they would want to do with their resources.
If anything, now is the time for the Falcon team to deliver on their promises and make it stable. If all else eventually fails, maybe someone in the community could maintain it and make Falcon fly.
Who knows where Oracle’s axe would fall…
You are correct Antony. And I didn’t say it was going to be canceled. The sad news is that it is being evaluated for (reading between the lines granted…. ) most likely being canceled. I think the Falcon project is an important enough part of the MySQL ecosphere with enough potential worth that it should not be discontinued. But hey, I’m not Oracle.