EnterpriseDB, the enterprise Postgres company, today announced that its open source solution is powering the databases for Free Realms(TM),the free-to-play online virtual world created by Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE). Since its launch in April 2009, Free Realms has attracted more than eight million registered users, and now relies on EnterpriseDB’s Postgres Plus Advanced Server as a high-performance, scalable database that can sustain its rapid growth and support its transaction-intensive environment.
Free Realms is a family-friendly Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) game developed by Sony Online Entertainment that allows players to easily explore a 3D world, customize their characters, play a wide variety of minigames and connect with friends through a social networking page. Free Realms regularly generates and stores massive amounts of data associated with character achievements and statistics, as well as player profiles for its thriving user base. With EnterpriseDB’s Postgres Plus Advanced Server, SOE has been able to reap the cost-savings associated with using an open source database, while also maintaining the consistently high levels of performance and reliability that are critical to the success of MMO games.
In addition to its cost and performance benefits, Postgres Plus includes an Oracle compatibility layer that enables Sony Online entertainment to deploy PostgreSQL as a complementary database in its Oracle environment. Doing so allows SOE to preserve its investment in Oracle skills and applications, while enjoying the cost savings of PostgreSQL.
"We wanted the cost and performance benefits of an open source database, but weren’t willing to sacrifice the reassurance that comes with vendor support. EnterpriseDB gives us the best of both worlds," said Andy Sites, Free Realmssenior producer of Sony Online Entertainment. "Postgres Plus has proven to be a cost-effective database that can accommodate Free Realms’ massive growth.
We’ve had great success with the transaction processing capabilities, and are pleased with its performance in supporting Free Realms’ query-intensive nature."
"As a reliable, scalable database that can support high-transaction applications, Postgres Plus is a natural fit for Massively Multiplayer Online games," said Larry Alston, vice president of marketing for EnterpriseDB. "As a pioneer in the gaming industry, Sony Online Entertainment has embraced Postgres Plus as a foundation for the immensely popular Free Realms, and we expect additional MMO game developers to follow. This is further validation of Postgres Plus as a full-featured enterprise-grade database, and we are excited to support Free Realms’ impressive trajectory."
Postgres Plus Advanced Server is built on top of the open source PostgreSQL database and is the only fully-functional open source relational database management system RDBMS in the market. The PostgreSQL community is over 15 years old and is the only true open source database community. With more than 200 active committers, thousands of contributors worldwide, and millions of downloads a year, PostgreSQL has emerged as the open source database of choice for corporate IT developers.
