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Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

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Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#131

Post by giis »

sllabres wrote: post #109
giis wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember, Oracle also forced 'Redhat' customers (who rely on Oracle DB) to their Linux in similar manner. Now I wonder BTRFS is not getting enough attention, because its started by Oracle and their history with open-source?

Not an expert in Oracle DB licensing. Could you explain?

I'm not expert in licensing too. I've friends who said, when they needed enterprise support for Oracle DB running on Redhat, directly/indirectly the message they received is to migrate from Redhat linux to Oracle linux. I think that quite clear by some kind of 'cold-war' going on between Redhat & Oracle.

http://fossforce.com/2016/03/microsoft-oracle-oracle-tried-r...

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#132

Post by user5994461 »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #124
cstejerean wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Oracle license prohibits people from publishing performance benchmarks of Oracle against other databases. Or at least that's what I remember.

Welp, that's dissapointing, but it gives me a solid reason to never ever trust the claim that Oracle is "just better" than anything else. Claims without proof should hold very little weight with any critical mind. I'm totally open to the idea that Oracle is better in at least some ways (surely their engineers aren't just twiddling their thumbs all day), but I need to see it proven. So far the features that oracle had…

- Oracle was the only SQL DB able to shard. (might still be)

- Oracle was the only database able to take multi GB or TB of data in a single table/DB. (Old MySQL/Postgre had various limitations like X GB per table for a long time, they still do).

If you worked in the DB in the 200X years, Oracle was the standard and for good reasons. MySQL/Postgre were considered like toys, for good reasons.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#133

Post by user5994461 »

Joeri wrote: post #39
Illniyar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Oracle database is a beast, both in terms of performance, performance tuning and features. It probably out performs MySQL and Postgres in most areas - and if you don't do horizontal scaling, then Oracle is probably your best bet if you want to get the most out of a server. I don't think there are any advantages of going to vertical scaling over horizontal scaling these days.

Relational databases don't scale horizontally all that far because of the challenges in replicating writes. Either you do delayed replication and have inconsistent slaves, or you do sharding and have a complicated app layer. The trick to scaling a sql db is to either shard it and treat it like nosql with worse tooling, or go vertical as far as you can before you go horizontal. Luckily, there aren't many workloads tha…

They can scale by normalizing and dropping transactions. Then that's really close to a NoSQL db, so might as well use a No SQL db.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#134

Post by syshum »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #120
cm2187 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet the mid-sized bank founded in 1888 will still be around well after 80% of these tech companies failed...

Being around isn't the same as growth though, and being around doesn't necessarily mean to run your own IT infrastructure either.

I find this modern fixation on growth MBA's have forced upon the business world to be facinating

Use to Stability, and Profitability not growth was important.

Stability, and Profitability were the goal, growth followed but was not in itself a goal

Now even if you are profitable, if you are not seeing growth then you failed. It is ridiculous.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#135

Post by toyg »

z3t4 wrote: post #129
toyg wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of these jobs are offshored now, so it's not as relevant a factor as you think. What is relevant is the amount of business applications and solutions built on the database, that took years to develop and would cost a fortune to replace.

is it not standard practice to support at least two different db systems !?

For certain values of "support". Say you start on Oracle and then want to move to SqlServer? Migration will likely be a risky endeavor, even if the application supports either db when starting from scratch. To begin with, you'll need something to copy schemas across, be it in the app itself or not, and hope everything made it across. Then you'll have to hope the app doesn't need db-specific stuff (say, a sequence that you only get on sqlserver) that you don't have because you started on Ora. And then you'll have to move all the 3rd party tooling and hacks that you built over the years around that same database - from backup solutions to custom queries etc. It's rarely as easy as "copy it all and turn it back on", and all this work often has to be done by expensive application specialists.

At that point, having to choose between paying hundreds of thousands to move db, or a few extra thousands per year to keep things as they are, the business decision is not as simple as one would think.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#136

Post by amzans »

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…

You are totally correct about how change is slow in enterprise, and this favors Oracle tremendously.

But I don't think you realize the extent of Google's ubiquitousness. Innovation is a survival strategy, and between the companies you mentioned, Oracle comes last in that front.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#137

Post by horus_the_cat »

user5994461 wrote: post #130
jpgvm wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience using Oracle is throwing performance out the window. It's not uncommon to have 40+ machines running an Oracle product that struggles to support 1-2k concurrent users. For instance the Oracle Identity Manager, which is glorified LDAP was deployed on about that number of boxes at a previous company I worked at. It took over a year to implement and they still only used the LDAP functionality. In the end…

I don't know about the Oracle identity suite but I'd like to say that OpenLDAP is a ridiculous joke. (Just like the MySQL/PostgreSQL vs Oracle DB debate at times). The only scalable LDAP server is the one from Sun Microsystem (openDS). It was killed when Oracle acquired Sun because they already had identity products. Then the sun guys quit to continue the products line under their own company, ForgeRock. https://forg…

Oracle's IM suite provides some questionable value. It's passable technically, questionable from the biz perspective and in reality is a land-and-expand product with lots of optional modules that Oracle is happy to 'advise' you about.

Technically it works... sometimes. Custom shims have a tendency to lead to complications because the API isn't very well-exposed or documented... it was another acquisition product.

Infrastructurally it's an unmitigated garbage fire. Oracle seems to think, e.g., your organization is too stupid (which is true, since you're an Oracle client) to know how to connect to AD from a nix machine or Java application, so the hardware footprint is huge.

It's questionable biz-wise for two reasons. First, because it's sold as a "complete", off-the-shelf solution when in reality it's probably about a dozen analysts working on it full-time for months just to get its biz logic set up, and then a handful for maintenance. Second, because OIM aims to be a institution-wide, one-stop-shop product (which it is* good at), but institutions that acquire it are so large that they're bereft with inter-department politics and policies that make using it firm-wide difficult.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#138

Post by sqldba »

ww520 wrote: post #38
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...

The decision to use Oracle is often not by engineers.

Sure it is.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#139

Post by saganus »

threeseed wrote: post #28
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...

Oracle will be around for many, many decades to come. Especially since in the enterprise world nobody could care less what engineers thought. Managers determine budgets and capabilities. Architects determine what to purchase and how it fits together. Engineers implement. Pecking order that's been around as long as Oracle has. The biggest obstacle to Oracle's future success isn't price or other databases. It's the ana…

Oracle actually has a product called Big Data Appliance (and has been for a couple of years IIRC), that offers Cloudera-based clusters. They also offer that as a cloud service so you don't have to actually own the hardware.

Not sure how much traction is having vs Horton or Cloudera, but I'm sure a lot of companies that already buy Oracle would look into it if needed.

Re: Oracle’s Cloud Licensing Change

#140

Post by horus_the_cat »

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...

Oracle has a huge client base in the gov't and healthcare sectors (at least in the US). Gov't and healthcare also lean heavily on solutions vendors who tend to use Oracle. This is a sector that is easily 10 or 20 years behind the curve in most places, so Oracle offering their me-too product line-up is safe and reassuring.
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