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Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

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Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#201

Post by jpgvm »

user5994461 wrote: post #198
jpgvm wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenLDAP can also handle millions of accounts, is open-source, supports awesome replication and availability topologies and doesn't require any consultants or otherwise bullshit dependencies/support contracts. I'm sorry but there isn't a commercial product that can compete with OpenLDAP and there may never be because it is just that good if you know how to use it. (yes, the learning curve is high, that is the only cr…

Here's a little known fact for you: OpenLDAP is a commercial software made by a company called symas. https://symas.com/ The open-source edition is only a facade with highly stripped features. If you want any decent replication, HA, performances or bugfix. You have to pay for their OpenLDAP gold edition, which last I checked was $100k for a site license.

Depends on your definition of highly stripped, decent replication, performance or bugfixes.

If you don't pay Symas money then no, you won't get support, or bugfixes developed for you.

However I doubt there is a large performance difference, it's already very efficient so it would be in the single percentage points.

As for replication you can do almost anything with the open-source version by combining syncrepl/delta-syncrepl into the topology you want, hell you can do N-way multi-master if you wanted.

I'm not sure what you have against using open-source OpenLDAP, maybe you should try it first?

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#202

Post by nickpsecurity »

coredog64 wrote: post #157
elorant wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you realize how the enterprise ecosystem works. There are legacy Cobol systems scattered all around the place. Corporations stick with their platforms for decades. This isn't the web development front where we change platform every couple of years. In corporations change is slow because there are significant sums of money invested in people and procedures. You just don't change that for the next flashy…

At a prior employer, the CIO was so pissed off about Oracle licensing that he seriously considered freezing Oracle versions (as a prelude to migration off the platform) and buying third party support from Rimini Street. If enough businesses pursue that option, then the cash cow of annual support dries up and Oracle is in a world of hurt.

"If enough businesses pursue that option, then the cash cow of annual support dries up and Oracle is in a world of hurt."

They could just raise licensing costs. They've already won on API copyrights. Businesses would have to move everything off Oracle entirely with new API's to avoid legal risk. Such moves, esp if Oracle docs suck as much as claimed here, can cost a fortune with huge chance of breaking stuff. Oracle just has to keep cost of licensing lower than that of a move.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#203

Post by fs111 »

koolba wrote: post #153
JackMorgan wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, my new boss laughed when we complained about Oracle. He adamantly insists it was the best database in the world. He also knows only one database.

It is a fantastic database. Best is a subjective term but for a MVCC translational workload it's amazing. Note that I'm talking specifically about the database itself, not the cluster fuck of end user software built atop it (ex: Oracle Financials).

> It is a fantastic database

no, it really is not.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#204

Post by bastardoperator »

bane wrote: post #184

One of the projects I'm working on is suffering from many of the ills that come with using Oracle on a project. At first we built the entire stack using PostgreSQL (like most sane projects should), but when it came time to deliver to the customer, they had not yet chosen to allow it as an approved software component and suggested we move to Oracle -- that was over a year ago. We've fought every kind of licensing issu…

Companies these days chose Oracle for one reason. They're scared of being sued. Several operations I've been involved with chose it as insurance policy. They want the ability to defer litigation to Oracle should it occur. Oracle touts its support and aggressive legal defense as a selling point. Engineers don't recommend Oracle, C titles and Sr. Management do. Sorry to hear about your issues, I'm sure the product worked amazingly on Postgres.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#205

Post by pjmlp »

kpil wrote: post #195
pjmlp wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still have to answer to the managers. Also in the enterprise space code changes are measured in dollars/euro/yan/... per hour, not engineer happiness.

Eh, that's true just about everywhere... Code = Money. You spend some money, get new and hopefully better code, and with some luck you will get a return on the investment, ie more money than you spent on doing it. Unless you are doing it for fun. Or don't know what to do with all the money you have.

You misunderstood me.

That better code had a cost of 1 000 euros, due to the amount of hours spent on it.

How much profit did those euros spent on developer salary brought to the business revenue?

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#206

Post by dpb001 »

chris_wot wrote: post #170
koolba wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a fantastic database. Best is a subjective term but for a MVCC translational workload it's amazing. Note that I'm talking specifically about the database itself, not the cluster fuck of end user software built atop it (ex: Oracle Financials).

Ever tried to tune it via their CBO? Then do a major release upgrade?

The phrase "tune it via their CBO" doesn't make sense.

Oracle DBA here who hates their licensing, practices, etc. as much as the next guy, but I have to hand it to their query optimization. I've seen their optimizer get better with every major release, and yes, regression testing will always turn up a few problems but Oracle gives you the best tools to analyze and override the decisions that the optimizer is making when necessary (and I'm not just talking about basic hints here)

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#207

Post by dragonwriter »

elorant wrote: post #31
echelon wrote: post #13

How much longer do you all think Oracle will be around as a company? They burned all bridges with engineers long ago, and they're not going to be able to keep selling their blatant and expensive lock-in strategy to management. Maybe when they finally do go under Google will be able to buy Java and MySQL...

I don't think you realize how the enterprise ecosystem works. There are legacy Cobol systems scattered all around the place. Corporations stick with their platforms for decades. This isn't the web development front where we change platform every couple of years. In corporations change is slow because there are significant sums of money invested in people and procedures. You just don't change that for the next flashy…

> And thus the future for Oracle is much more promising than it is for Google or Apple.

I'm not sure that's true; it's may be true that Oracle has more Enterprise penetration now, but enterprises with significant Oracle dependencies I've encountered are mostly migrating out (largely to Microsoft) -- including enterprises that also have substantial decades-old COBOL mainframe legacy that they aren't as actively working to retire.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#208

Post by dragonwriter »

BatFastard wrote: post #78
threeseed wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet is pretty fickle though. I still remember when people switched from Altavista to Google and from MySpace to Facebook. It didn't take all that long and look at those old companies now. Whilst Oracle has done absolutely nothing the last few years other than crappy, me-too products they do have a LOT of luck on their side. Why ? Because nobody is touching the EDW (enterprise data warehouse) space. There are…

You are confusing consumers facing products( Altavista, MySpace ) with corporate facing customers. The corporations have invested 10s of million or more developing products based on Oracle products. Changing from Oracle to PostgresSQL is possibly many years of work and multiple projects for a large company.

> Changing from Oracle to PostgresSQL is possibly many years of work and multiple projects for a large company

Enterprise IT is broken enough that those multiple system replacement projects were going to happen anyway because of accumulated technical debt and broken development and maintenance processes, and replacing a backend DB as part of that replacement is a rounding error in expense. Sure, it takes a lot of time for the transition to be complete, but lots of those transitions off Oracle are already underway.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#209

Post by aNoob7000 »

bane wrote: post #184

One of the projects I'm working on is suffering from many of the ills that come with using Oracle on a project. At first we built the entire stack using PostgreSQL (like most sane projects should), but when it came time to deliver to the customer, they had not yet chosen to allow it as an approved software component and suggested we move to Oracle -- that was over a year ago. We've fought every kind of licensing issu…

Not to be a dick, but what kind of issues did you have with their import/export tools?

As someone who has worked with Oracle and Microsoft SQL databases for many years, you sound like someone who has never worked with their database. Oracle databases might be expensive but you can move data between instances and schemas using SQLLDR or DataPump with ease.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#210

Post by brianwawok »

dpb001 wrote: post #206
chris_wot wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever tried to tune it via their CBO? Then do a major release upgrade?

The phrase "tune it via their CBO" doesn't make sense. Oracle DBA here who hates their licensing, practices, etc. as much as the next guy, but I have to hand it to their query optimization. I've seen their optimizer get better with every major release, and yes, regression testing will always turn up a few problems but Oracle gives you the best tools to analyze and override the decisions that the optimizer is making w…

Until someone switches a table name from lowercase to uppercase and the hand rolled optimizer stops working?
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