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'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

theregister.com

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Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#51

Post by gadflyinyoureye »

whiterknight wrote: post #40
zaphar wrote: post #17

Look, if you are already in business with Oracle then you have my condolences. But if you aren't in business with them then there is absolutely no world where you should ever under any circumstances consider getting into business with them. Nothing their database does can't be done with a different database. Even paying for a proprietary database can be done with a different party than Oracle. Do not, I repeat, do no…

How is there such a big disconnect between HN opinion on Oracle and business use? Is it maybe the least bad of all the bad options? Does it cover some edge cases which the obvious FOSS solutions don’t?

Many large companies want a Batphone to call someone for support. They think that the vendor will magically just make things work. Normally that’s not the case. They might get it to work faster than your people, but probably not much quicker.

FOSS often has a Batphone, but few people pay for it. As a result management doesn’t want their Ops to be the only possible team to correct things.

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#52

Post by estebank »

walrus01 wrote: post #34
politelemon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that specialize in Oracle license compliance Oh but it gets better. Many of them are ex oracle employees. It's a huge racket that exists for itself.

I have mentally trained myself that every time I read the word "Oracle", I replace it with "Larry Ellison needs a bigger yacht". Thus far, this has worked great for me in staying away from paying that organization even one dollar.

Oracle is an acronym: One rich asshole called Larry Ellison.

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#53

Post by travem »

__loam wrote: post #16
icedchai wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you're using an Oracle database, you are probably using proprietary Oracle features, SQL syntax, client libraries, etc. The first chance you get might be a while. I once worked on a project porting an app from Oracle to another commercial DB. When Oracle is deeply embedded in your applications, it's easier said than done.

It's a good thing there aren't numerous open source alternative databases that can be hosted by numerous other services then.

Amazon provide multiple database offerings in their cloud, it was still a multiple year effort to move off Oracle:

  Migration Complete – Amazon’s Consumer Business Just Turned off its Final Oracle Database

  Today I would like to tell you about an internal database migration effort of this type that just wrapped up after several years of work.
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/migration-complete-amazons-...

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#54

Post by walrus01 »

icedchai wrote: post #8
krylon wrote: post #5

"a specialist advisory company helping clients deal with Oracle licenses" I would (naively, I know) imagine that if you need to hire a third party to help you sort out your licenses with a vendor, you would do whatever it takes to get rid of that vendor. It's almost as if Oracle wants their customers to ditch them the first chance they get.

Once you're using an Oracle database, you are probably using proprietary Oracle features, SQL syntax, client libraries, etc. The first chance you get might be a while. I once worked on a project porting an app from Oracle to another commercial DB. When Oracle is deeply embedded in your applications, it's easier said than done.

I would think that the way to do this would be to set up realtime replication from the origin oracle DB to a db with the same schema running on something much more 'normal' such as mariadb, and then set up client applications and libraries and queries to the newly replicated db in a read only mode. And then setting up test client application/libraries for write mode to a copy of the replicated db and verify everything is also working normally.

After confirming everything is working okay, at some point in time, have a "rip off the band aid" moment of cutting off the oracle db and declaring the replicated one as the new primary.

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#55

Post by bediger4000 »

I worked at a phone company circa 2010 that basically had an office of Oracle compliance. They had lots of ongoing disputed. I sat in a cubicle across from the guy who worked to get projects off Weblogic Server after Oracle acquired BEA. The doctrine was that WLS cost more and used 4X the CPU and memory that alternatives did, in addition to avoiding Oracle audits.

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#56

Post by vetinari »

kragen wrote: post #46
layer8 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle doesn’t provide LTS updates. Each Oracle OpenJDK version is only supported for six months and doesn’t receive any further updates afterwards.

pretty sure you can get your openjdk lts updates from debian

Those are Debian's (or Redhat's, or Fedora's) builds.

Oracle ones are exactly as layer8 wrote. Moreso, if you also need windows or macos build; there's no Debian or Redhat then.

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#57

Post by [deleted] »

mayoff wrote: post #6

A few years ago, my then-employer (a smallish company, < 150 employees) had to deal with an Oracle compliance audit. I was shocked at the time to learn that there are companies (like Palisade Compliance mentioned in this article) that specialize in Oracle license compliance. We made it through just fine (in fact I believe we managed to get a small refund!), but having been through that (though not in any way directly…

[deleted]

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#58

Post by vetinari »

whiterknight wrote: post #40
zaphar wrote: post #17

Look, if you are already in business with Oracle then you have my condolences. But if you aren't in business with them then there is absolutely no world where you should ever under any circumstances consider getting into business with them. Nothing their database does can't be done with a different database. Even paying for a proprietary database can be done with a different party than Oracle. Do not, I repeat, do no…

How is there such a big disconnect between HN opinion on Oracle and business use? Is it maybe the least bad of all the bad options? Does it cover some edge cases which the obvious FOSS solutions don’t?

Tech people are those, who have to fix everything once SHTF.

Business people are those, who get to go to nice trips and dinners for their "right" decision.

Any other questions?

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#59

Post by shrubble »

walrus01 wrote: post #54
icedchai wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you're using an Oracle database, you are probably using proprietary Oracle features, SQL syntax, client libraries, etc. The first chance you get might be a while. I once worked on a project porting an app from Oracle to another commercial DB. When Oracle is deeply embedded in your applications, it's easier said than done.

I would think that the way to do this would be to set up realtime replication from the origin oracle DB to a db with the same schema running on something much more 'normal' such as mariadb, and then set up client applications and libraries and queries to the newly replicated db in a read only mode. And then setting up test client application/libraries for write mode to a copy of the replicated db and verify everythin…

Far easier said than done. And that you mentioned MySQL/MariaDB as a possible replacement means that you have never worked with Oracle's SQL dialect.

Re: 'We had to educate Oracle about our contract,' CIO says after Big Red audit

#60

Post by zaphar »

gadflyinyoureye wrote: post #51
whiterknight wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is there such a big disconnect between HN opinion on Oracle and business use? Is it maybe the least bad of all the bad options? Does it cover some edge cases which the obvious FOSS solutions don’t?

Many large companies want a Batphone to call someone for support. They think that the vendor will magically just make things work. Normally that’s not the case. They might get it to work faster than your people, but probably not much quicker. FOSS often has a Batphone, but few people pay for it. As a result management doesn’t want their Ops to be the only possible team to correct things.

You can get a Batphone without doing business with Oracle. Microsoft SQL Server will give you a Batphone and would still be better than doing business with Oracle.
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