I'm interested in implementing some kind of autonomic-computing functionality using MySQL. By autonomic-computing I mean roughly some failsafe abilities, whereby the application appears to be at least slightly "intelligent"

For reference, the main parts of autonomic computing we'd like are the "self-configuring" and "self-healing" features (the other two - "self-optimizing" and "self-protecting", are too abstract/futuristic for us, at this time).

Sofor example, if we have a sample Java application that utilizes a MySQL database, we might want to automatically restart the MySQL database if we take up too much memory.

Or maybe we want to have the ability to dynamiccally adjust the database memory as needed. So for example, when we start the application the database begins with a 56 Megabyte buffer; but then as we insert so many rows we want to have it automatically jump up to 512 MB, then to 1024, until a max of 4096 MB.

Does all of the above suggest that MySQL is too "weak" for the task? Do you suggest using Oracle database?

My professor believes that by using Java we can basically make up for any memory-management deficiencies that MySQL has in relation to Oracle DB.

I'm new to MySQL , but have experience with Oracle. If all of the above sounds wishy-washy, it is because I'm still fleshing it out. thanks