Results of EnterpriseDB Open Source Database Survey

EnterpriseDB announced the results of the survey they did a few months ago at OSCON. Now, take the results with a grain of salt as it was done by EnterpriseDB. EnterpriseDB is based on Postgres so there is a vested interest in making Postgres sound good. Results can be skewed depending on how the survey is worded, what options are available as answers and who the respondents are.

The results summary is available for free.

Some key facts:

500 respondents. The download page says "500 corporate IT leaders". Or maybe, 500 open source developers. ;-)

Only 9% of respondents indicated that they preferred commercial solutions over open source solutions. I would guess that a majority of those responding were open source database people anyway. This is also one place where I think the wording of survey questions makes a difference. I'd like to see the survey again and compare the results to the survey itself.

The survey shows that respondents are using open source to migrate away from Oracle and SQL Server. It says that less than 1% is using open source to migrate away from DB2. Since DB2 is a major investor in EnterpriseDB, that doesn't surprise me. Again, the target users of the survey make a difference as well as the questions themselves.

Of course, Postgres was chosen more than any other open source database for transactional applications and high reliability. Again, not surprising based on who wrote the survey and what they sell.

Before I put very much value on this survey, I would want to see more than just a hand-crafted summary of the results. A spreadsheet of all the questions and the answers chosen would be, at least somewhat, valuable. Without that though, it's just marketing. I can't find anything on the site indicating the full results will be made available.

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