EnterpriseDB, an open source database company based on PostgreSQL, issued a press release today (“Survey Predicts Wave of Enterprise Open Source Database Deployments“) regarding the results of the 2006 Open Source Impressions Survey, sent to over 12,000 subscribers of the Sys-Con publication, Java Developer’s Journal. The survey was sponsored by EnterpriseDB, and this was disclosed in the release.

In summary, the primary stat in the release is that more than half of the respondents indicated that their organizations had already deployed an open source database or were more likely to deploy an open source database than another open source application.

I’m not sure that I understand the “or” aspect of that result, as the two issues are fundamentally different.

Has your organization deployed an open source database? Yes/No

Is your organization more likely to deploy an open source database opposed to another open source application? Yes/No

I can see these two questions having considerably different results, but it seems that they were asked as part of the same question (that or I am reading the release wrong). Would the first question net greater than 50%? Probably not – although subscribers to Java Developer’s Journal are going to skew positive versus a cross-section of the market. What about the second question? Perhaps. The two combined? Certainly. Don’t forget that these respondents are primarily developers, and developers are running all sorts of technology on their workstations and in development that hasn’t made it to production.

A critique of the survey aside, open source database usage is on the rise, and no one can deny that.