#10 Use MySQL instead of Oracle

[Bill Thies]

Currently the Server uses an old version of Oralce
(version 8) that we got for free, I think, from the Oracle
website. It might have depended on having an
academic license.

Either way, it would be good to make all components of
TEK completely open source, and there is no
fundamental reason why we can't use MySQL instead of
Oracle. The last time we checked, the only database
functionality we are using that is in Oracle but not
MySQL is the ability to select a minimum of a field from a
table, as in line 831 of of
tek.server.database.TEKProtocolDB:

String query1 = "select MAIL_QID, EADDR, MSGBODY,
HAS_ATTACHMENT_P, " +
"ATTACHMENT_FILENAME, MSG_TYPE from
Mail_Q " +
"where MAIL_QID = (select min(MAIL_QID) from
Mail_Q)";

However, it seems to me that MySQL should support
this, or something equivalent to this, too (?)

In order to switch the databases, someone would just
have to iron out the interface with MySQL and make
sure that the same functionality is supported. You
would also have to migrate the existing database entries
on the MIT server, from Oracle to MySQL. The following
file might need to be modified -- it sets up all the
database tables:

tek/server/database/initialize-databse.sql