MySQL Gets Starkey, Buys Netfrastructure

MySQL is buying Netfrastructure, a privately held Web application technology firm, and will bring aboard database pioneer Jim Starkey, as part of the deal.

Starkey created InterBase, a respected database that became part of Borland International.

When Borland bought Dbase pioneer Ashton-Tate a decade ago, then Borland CEO Philippe Kahn called InterBase the "crown jewel" of that acquisition.

InterBase, a cult favorite, claimed to be the first relational database to support Binary Large Objects or BLOBs. It also supported multi-versioning before mainstream databases.

Starkey will become senior software architect for MySQL, with U.S. headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. Taneli Otala was named CTO. Otala had been CTO and vice president of engineering for SenSage, an analytics company and has worked at Oracle.

The news comes a week after Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle bought Sleepycat, the maker of the BerkeleyDB open-source embeddable database.

MySQL distributes and supports a popular eponymous database in commercial and free versions.

The company also disputed Web reports that it is adopting the Firebird architecture.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.