There were new metrics out this week for both EnterpriseDB's PostgreSQL-centric database business, and Sun Microsystems' MySQL business. These players are at the forefront of challenging pricing for databases and surrounding services from competitors such as Oracle, and both are having strong success with strategies focused on open source databases.

Is Red Hat making a play for the open source database market? Linux leader Red Hat (NYSE:RHT) is investing in open source database vendor EnterpriseDB, the official announcement is set for release on Tuesday October 27th. The official press release does not disclose the exact amount that Red Hat is investing, but it is part of a $19M series C round of funding.

Ever since Sun anteed up a billion in cold cash for MySQL a couple months back, we wondered when the next shoe would drop. Recently, EnterpriseDB announced that IBM was one of several venture backers to fund its third $10m round of financing.

South Africa’s nTier has completed a migration of the Water Research Commission’s Compiere ERP system from Oracle to the PostgreSQL-based EnterpriseDB. The commission made the move from the Oracle database to EnterpriseDB because the EnterpriseDB relational database was a more affordable option, nTier said in a statement today.

When it comes to open source databases, MySQL gets the lion’s share of attention. This is unfortunate, because out of the two, PostgreSQL offers much more security, reliability, and data integrity than MySQL does.

MySQL use declining, PostgreSQL and MariaDB use rising and no majority support for any of the possible outcomes of the current European Commission investigation into Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems; these are some of the results of a survey, carried out by the 451 Group, of open source users show which shows they are split over the future of MySQL.

Michael "Monty" Widenius, one of two founders and main developers of MySQL leaves Sun Microsystems with several other ones. He will continue to develop MySQL independently. The main reason is disagreement with Sun's development politic that allows releases (that will be production ready) to have known serious bugs.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. has announced the general availability of MySQL 5.1, a new version of open source database, designed to improve performance and simplify management of large database applications.

For an executive who had just had his company bought for a cool billion a few months ago and was on the eve of announcing a major update to his business' flagship database program, former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, now Sun Microsystems' senior vice president for databases, didn't look comfortable.