Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Frustration of H2 consumers

Many people have took the beauty of H2 database for granted and have asked for designs like compatibilities for Oracle and MySQL and other databases. 

Many have forgotten that H2 database IS H2 database... and not MySQL, Oracle .... whatever they are asking for. H2 is such a well thought out design, that people have simply been asking for ridiculous feature requests.

For consumers of H2 database, DO NOT EXPECT TO BE ABLE TO USE THE FULL ORACLE OR MYSQL OR OTHER SUPPORTED DATABASES SYNTAX.

Another down side of supporting too many database syntax other than from the standards or from H2's own syntax, is the slow bloating of H2. 

H2's goal is to be as lightweight and a jar file of around 1 MB, not some totally bloated... everything can do database system.

I hope consumers can have a consideration for H2 database and it's birlliant developers who have made such a fascinatingly powerful database.

Yes, things do break and can be frustrating (when using H2) but this is the same for all other software applications. Some impatient consumers would simply swarm to the H2 database forum and switch on their Capslock and type a message for help expecting an immediate fix.

Rather than complaining, consumers should actively try to support H2 and it's team by helping out with creating patches if they think they are up to it or submit some useful source codes they hope that could be included into H2 releases in the future.

I have personally done some hacking with H2 to get what I want from it since I acknowledge that H2 cannot always fulfil the features I want.

I hope H2 consumers could be patient with the H2 team and not be unreasonable with feature requests while always keeping in mind H2's goal (I don't mean to stop everyone from submitting their feature requests, but be tactful and considerate).

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