Many of you might have worked with MySQL at some point in your career. This is a nice relational platform that enjoyed tremendous popularity due to the low overhead and simplicity of setting up a database instance. Along with the ability to run on almost any platform in the world, MySQL formed the basis of the LAMP application stack, along with Linux, Apache, and Perl/PHP/Python.

Some of you might be aware that there were several storage engines available for MySQL, which could be loaded and unloaded from a running instance. These various engines offered difference features and performance levels, enabling the administration to tune the engine to suit their workload. However many of you might not be aware that MySQL also supposed multiple query processing engines.

A few years ago the Oracle Corporation purchased MySQL and offers several versions of the product, along with several storage engines. However Oracle has now dramatically raised the stakes of their competitive battle with Microsoft by offering a new query processing engine for MySQL, the Cobra QP.

Cobra QP is the query processor that is 100% compatible with all T-SQL code through SQL Server 2014. This is a dramatic game changer in that any application running on SQL Server could be ported to MySQL with the Cobra QP. The caveat is that TDS connectivity is not supported, so drivers and connections would need to be changed. However there are many MySQL drivers available for all platforms, including all version of Windows.

This engine is now available as a beta release, though the download requires a registration with Oracle and a hefty NDA. There also is ongoing litigation, which could eventually kill this project, though Oracle has threatened to release the entire query processor as an open source product if lawsuits proceed. Also, this is an April Fool's joke, so it's unlikely you'll be porting any of your applications in the near term.

Hopefully you've enjoyed this and I've managed to fool more than a couple of you.