Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 344 posts

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#261

Post by Spooky23 »

prokes wrote: post #54
meddlepal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've been told by a contact in their database sales team is that there pipeline for on-premise licenses is drying up quickly but their SaaS business is doing well.

Just to add a little nuance - the difference is in flow vs stock of customers. Very few existing EBS customers are reimplementing in Cloud because of the time, cost, and loss of customizations. It doesn't make sense. New customers are being forced into Cloud by the Oracle sales team. The sales reps literally receive no compensation for on-prem (EBS) deals, and they must go through a lengthy approval process just to o…

The exception is if they peddle a Sun hardware solution. They will be slobbering like a dog with a bone if you show any interest.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#262

Post by sb8244 »

mattzito wrote: post #235
sb8244 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What hard problems are they solving that can't be solved with OSS today (tech problems)? I've heard things about their business apps division (business problems) and I can't say I particularly believe in their future there versus smaller focused companies.

So - I'm definitely not willing to go as far as the GP was with their statement, but Oracle's database technology is pretty amazing. I love postgres, Spark, NoSQL, etc. and think the progress they have made is amazing, but Oracle's database from a raw featureset is incredible. - Shared-something database clustering - true scale-out database clustering without writing sharding logic into your application, worrying abo…

Thanks for this. I've heard good things about their DB and appreciate you writing down things you've liked about it. I can see the viability there given the other comment that .01% of customers provide the majority revenue, if they need this level of sophistication.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#263

Post by iamnotlarry »

I got a sales call from Oracle out of the blue a few weeks ago. I have no idea what brought my company to their attention.

I explained to the sales person that I am an Oracle-certified DBA with years of experience managing Oracle servers. I then told him there was absolutely no chance I would ever recommend switching to Oracle. In answer to his questions, I explained that I could not trust Oracle. I don't mean Oracle the RDBMS, I mean Oracle the company. He should be able to understand the need to trust your RDBMS. It would be crazy to use RDBMS software with you data if you didn't trust it. I think it would be crazy to trust a developer with your RDBMS if you don't trust the developer.

I don't want to make sure I have the right lawyers and all my legal ducks in a row to battle Oracle for the heart and sole of my company (what company doesn't have data at its core these days?). I want to solve problems and create great things. I want partners in that effort who I trust. I don't trust Oracle. They do not want what is best for me. I don't want to end up as roadkill on there quest to be more profitable. I'd rather work with those who think that my success is their success.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#264

Post by [deleted] »

wcarron wrote: post #242
metachris wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The developers moved to MariaDB, which is what everyone uses nowadays anyway rather than MySQL.

Patently false. I barely hear any talk about MariaDB whereas I still consistently hear about MySQL. Please define "Everybody" in this context, because it sounds like you've conflated it with "I".

[deleted]

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#266

Post by chinhodado »

bogomipz wrote: post #244
empath75 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growth rate is a nonsense metric. If you're starting from nothing and invest a shitload of money in sales you'll have an amazing growth rate. IBM and Oracle are both way behind azure, google and aws.

>"The figures come even though--as mentioned in the earnings report headline--Oracle's SaaS/PaaS revenue rose 77% in dollars and 79% in CC, totaling $798 million " $800 million from their cloud offering in a single quarter is nonsense?

Maybe not, but that number doesn't tell the whole story. This is revenue. How much are they spending on R&D, infrastructure, marketing, etc. for their cloud business? How fast is that spending's growth in relative to the revenue?

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#267

Post by mattzito »

djfergus wrote: post #241
mattzito wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So - I'm definitely not willing to go as far as the GP was with their statement, but Oracle's database technology is pretty amazing. I love postgres, Spark, NoSQL, etc. and think the progress they have made is amazing, but Oracle's database from a raw featureset is incredible. - Shared-something database clustering - true scale-out database clustering without writing sharding logic into your application, worrying abo…

Great comment, thanks for the details on the specific tech - this is rarely captured in the regular "just replace Oracle with PGSQL" threads on HN. I think you can add to this the fact that Oracle has been hardening the platform and building/fixing edge cases for 30 years. This goes a long way to preventing procurement departments from moving away from the "no-one got fired for buying " model. I heard a crazy stat th…

> I heard a crazy stat that 99% of Oracle's business ($36B revenue, $9B profit) comes from the top 0.01% of customers (basically the US Govt and the Fortune 10). The average OSS start up is not going to materially affect this.

That's almost certainly not true, given my experience with Oracle's business. I think it's fine to say that 90% of Oracle's business comes from the Global 1000, but I know what some F500 bills from Oracle were, and they were in the $100m-$200m/year range, so you need a much broader spread to get to 36b

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#268

Post by nl »

diebir wrote: post #100

Oracle is set to repeat the trajectory of SCO. Their primary product (the Oracle DB engine) is being displaced by the NoSQL and things like Postgres. The "next generation" of developers equals SQL engines with "old and bad", and when forced, it ends up with Postgres anyway. Oracle used to survive in significant part by the support of the "database administrators" class. This layer of support is also becoming thinner…

Oracle has a perfectly good business model which doesn't rely on OracleDB at all: they buy vertical enterprise software companies and then milk their customers.

Worked for Sun, MySQL, Sieble, Peoplesoft, etc.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#269

Post by Spivak »

wcarron wrote: post #242
metachris wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The developers moved to MariaDB, which is what everyone uses nowadays anyway rather than MySQL.

Patently false. I barely hear any talk about MariaDB whereas I still consistently hear about MySQL. Please define "Everybody" in this context, because it sounds like you've conflated it with "I".

It's the same situation with SSL and TLS. If you ask for a MySQL database you have a good chance of getting MariaDB.

Oracle's largest asset in this situation is the brand mindshare.

Re: Oracle refuses to accept pro-Google “fair use” verdict in API battle

#270

Post by stephenr »

metachris wrote: post #206
bdcravens wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their primary product (the Oracle DB engine) is being displaced by the NoSQL and things like Postgres. Worth noting they own MySQL (via Sun acquisition)

The developers moved to MariaDB, which is what everyone uses nowadays anyway rather than MySQL.

> which is what everyone uses nowadays anyway rather than MySQL

Um. No.

Unless they're doing something quite eccentric with it, developers will target the standard MySQL api, and the application will then work with any of the MySQL/compatible database servers:

- Oracle MySQL Community Edition

- Oracle Standard/Enterprise Edition (i.e. paid versions)

- Percona Server for MySQL

- Percona XtraDB Cluster

- MariaDB

I tend to use/recommend Percona Server/Cluster (for dev/prod respectively) but as long as the MySQL-version is compatible (i.e. the fork has the SQL/engine features your application needs) it's likely that other factors (e.g. PXC has Galera replication built in, is completely open source, and has commercial support available if you want it) will be more of an influence to the decision on which to use.

Post reply on HN