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Downsides are the clients are a bit ugly. And I doubt it's cheap...

There's also Oracle Rdb, a product for OpenVMS that, as far as I understand, is quite different from the regular Oracle database. More details at Wikipedia.

What exactly does Oracle offer besides database offerings?

What exactly does Oracle offer besides database offerings?

Or another Larry or Sergey? What about another Tim? Or maybe another, another Larry? No? Never? Never ever Never? Please throw your sub-marxist historicist ramblings out of the window and get back into the real world. There will always be a place for some bastard/s with brains and balls to turn over the big boys no matter the industry, no matter the time.

Jack & Jane could run Oracle 10g Express Edition for free on their windows or Linux server, assuming they could shoehorn themselves into 4GB of data and a limited number of concurrent connections, and live without some of the advanced features. If they then went to a franchise model, J&J could upgrade to the non-free versions without having a lot of pain changing database backends.

Ever heard of OTN?

http://otn.oracle.com/ hosts the entire documentation library of every oracle product.

There's also http://forums.oracle.com/

All it takes is just a little looking around and you can find help...no need to blame Oracle for keeping everything under lock and key...because they certainly don't.

Ever heard of OTN?

http://otn.oracle.com/ hosts the entire documentation library of every oracle product.

There's also http://forums.oracle.com/

All it takes is just a little looking around and you can find help...no need to blame Oracle for keeping everything under lock and key...because they certainly don't.

One has to wonder if there was a discount if you passed along your Oracle support credentials. That would be an interesting marketing strategy.

One problem is that these customers downloaded files which weren't supposed to be made available to them under the terms of their support contracts. Why were their accounts able to get to these files then? I'm not sure that Oracle would want to admit they can't control the security of their own website, even if it boosts the credibility of the rest of their complaint.

Skip the press release and go right to the Complaint. (IT IS A PDF!! You've been warned.)

"But the big problem is they believed everyone would work together:

• would agree on web standards (hah!)
• would adopt a common vocabulary (you don't say)
• would reliably expose their APIs so anyone could use them (as if)"

One of the features of the W3C's model (based on RDF) is that it doesn't push the idea that everyone should adopt the same vocabulary (or ontology) for a topic or domain. Instead it offers a way to publish vocabularies with some semantics, including how terms in one vocabulary relate to terms in another. In addition, the framework makes it trivial to publish data in which you mix vocabularies, making statements about a person, for example, using terms drawn from FOAF, Dublin Core and others.

The RDF approach was designed with interoperability and extensibility in mind, unlike many other approaches. RDF is showing increasing adoption, showing up in products by Oracle, Adobe and Microsoft, for example.

If this approach doesn't continue to flourish and help realize the envisioned "web of data", and it might not after all, it will have left some key concepts, tested and explored, on the table for the next push. IMHO, the 'semantic web' vision -- a web of data for machines and their users -- is inevitable.

Let's take indemnification; this should be a topic every company should suddenly be looking very closely at. Microsoft just got nailed with a whopping $1.53 Billion, that's with a "B", judgment for the use of a common music standard. They did this because they indemnified Dell and Gateway, the companies initially targeted. If they had used Linux instead of Windows, it would be Dell and Gateway hit with some fraction of this judgment (and even a fraction of $1.52B is a big number). So where is the coverage? Don't you think it should be a hot topic right now, so where is the chatter?

This whole concept of distributors and software vendors protecting themselves (and engineering some lock-in, incidentally)
by certifying, or certifying for, certain distributions just isn't helping Linux or open source software get more
widely used.

ozgur uksal http://www.oracle.com/technology/

Therefore, take your time, revisit your decision and, in the end, you'll end up with a lot lower software and maintenance costs, running on older equipment with only a few viruses and malware knocking at your door.

Oracle offers a few packages that do all the things you mention - and will run on a variety of platforms. They have versions of at least two of their products that are tailored for small to medium business. So you could take a look at: http://www.oracle.com/applications/suites.html
 
I've never worked with any of their small business stuff -- so I can't recommend it, just pointing it out.

From BB's FAQ:

My company would like to incorporate Open Source Software into our proprietary software (e.g., include the Sakai Course Management System as part of a commercially-licensed software package). We won't be charging for the portion that contains the Open Source Software but will be charging for our proprietary portion. Is my company covered by this pledge?

No. To the extent that any proprietary software is Bundled with the Open Source Software, this pledge would not apply. However, if your customers wish to supplement or enhance your proprietary product with Open Source Software which is not Bundled by you, that would be covered. Blackboard believes this pledge provides a strong incentive for developers to continue building extensions to proprietary solutions as well as to enhance standards such as those promulgated by IMS, while allowing schools to accomplish all of its information technology goals.

Compare that with:
Oracle and Unicon, Inc. Unveil Plans to Create Next-Generation Academic Enterprise Environment

Then http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=ORCL&d=t
vs.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=bbbb

Cage match!

Well, instead of trolling for Postgres, let's mosey on over to the MySQL website and see if we can figure out why someone might want to pay, hrm? Ahh yes, here we go, MySQL Enterprise. Mmm. Let's click that. Iiiinteresting. Says here you get 24x7 web and phone support plus 30 minute emergency response time. Eat that, pgsql-bugs. You also get consultative support from people who spend all day tuning MySQL installations for max performance and reliability. I can't even find the Postgres analogue of that to make fun of. Lots of other goodies too numerous to mention that might be worth paying for.

If you're tossing Wankr 2.1 together in your bedroom then MySQL free, pgsql, or even sqlite is more than enough to meet your needs. If you run a large business that relies on MySQL to actually make some $$, then purchasing support is a rational choice. Especially since TCO is still about an order of magnitude less than competition.

Rock on! I think Oracle is getting the picture with Oracle 10g. I'll have to check out the client.

Oracle also has a simpler version of the database called Oracle 10g Express Edition, which should work for many people. I read that installation is almost as simple as 'apt-get install oracle-xe' for Debian users.

How about 10g Express? Runs on Linux and Windows, and as long as you're not setting up a cluster or anything it probably gives you everything you need. I think the price is right, too, at $free, although it only handles up to 4GB of data. Of course, for the vast majority of small sites, that's plenty.

But to install the Oracle *client* , I need to download 3 ISOs, install Xwindows on the server, tunnel Xwindows over SSH.

Installing the Instant Client involves merely unzipping a file.

Postgres is fully ACID compliant

As is MySQL.

has mature support for just about everything

It lacks anlaytic functions.

Above, an AC posted a link to http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06- may/o36lucas.html which sez the answer to your question is 'tape'. Makes sense, I suppose. Storing old movies which require TB don't sound like something to store on- or near-line. I doubt much of it is reusable, on a day to day basis. When you launch a major project (make Greedo shoot first or something) for it, then it's in the books, and you have a business requirement to fill on-line storage, acquire more if you need it, etc.

Read and weep. Database in filesystem weenies rejoice, although I'm usually opposed it's a better solution than a full-blown RDBMS.

Also worth noting is that ILM will probably have the entire Oracle source tree mirrored and termination provisions in their licensing deal. The vendor lock-in problem should not be an issue for ILM whereas a smaller house would be insane to do this.

On Oracle Magazine ( http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06- may ), they said they used Linux for their "render farm" (I hate the word farm, computers aren't cattle), but designs were made in other platforms (SGI, Mac...). Finally, everything, even every single rendered, uncompressed frame is stored on an Oracle database (which runs on Linux).

This may well be overkill, but if for your backend code you do want to go down the Enterprise Java route, then JSF is *supposed to be* independent of the view technology. Well-written component libraries will provide pluggable renderers. Most libraries do just have HTML renderers for the components, but Oracle's ADF (now open-sourced as Apache Trinidad) provides JSF over telnet:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/java/newslet ter/articles/introadffaces/index.html

Assuming it works, that is pretty cool, and it means your server-side can leverage the rich JEE technology suite.

The development of this new engine does not depend on Oracle.

If the supported limits are enough for your app:

Max 4 gb of user data
Using at most a single processor
Using max 1 gb RAM

Oracle its a pretty decent option, and this version its free (as in beer, not as in speech).

Faq here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database /xe/pdf/dbxe_faq.pdf

You have just described RedHat. No thanks.

Yikes. This is so wrong. First, RHEL 4 comes on 4 CDs, not one or two. Second, many packages supplied by RH are patched so far that the original developers won't provide support on the mailing lists (Squid, OpenLDAP for concrete examples). Others are maintained by RedHat, which either makes them massively patched, or not patched at all. Neither of the points given really apply to RedHat.

I would rather have Debian release schedules, but have all the packages that are in it. Most of the sysadmins out there who deploy debian do it exactly because "Resistance is futile, you shall be packaged" and because "apt-get install light" works 99.99% of the time.

I'd bet that most of the sysadmins who prefer Debian do so because it's what they are familiar and comfortable with it...such as yourself.

As a result there is a working platform on which to build services and commercial software regardless of what insane libraries your developers have chosen this time. Whatever it is, it can be apt-get installed. In the very rare cases you sometimes have to backport a version from testing, but someone has already solved most of the dependencies for you.

Trying something similar with RedHat quickly brings you into the land of RPM hell. I always love watching sysadmins suffering while trying to support development in a RedHat shop (especially where developers have su/sudo access). It is immensely entertaining to watch the network fall apart and be reduced to a random collection of machines all different from each other and each in its own circle of the RPM hell none being able to produce a release build.

Am I to take it that you are saying Debian based systems are immune to this? Not so much the RPM hell (duh, Debian doesn't use RPMs), but the random collection of machines all different from each other even though the developers have root access? How, pray tell, do you manage that? Block access to the apt repositories?

So from the perspective of someone who has been running Debian driven networks for 6+ years and with 5+ years of supporting Debian as a base for commercial development I can say - no thank you, you misunderstood what brings most sysadmins to Debian. It is the best *nix development platform out there.

First, what does System Administration have to do with developing software? A Sysadmin's job is keeping the boxes running, not crafting applications to run on them. If a system admin WERE to develop software, perhaps he wouldn't use libraries that require such acrobatics his box is endangered? Second, big commercial software developers seem to disagree with you. For example, BEA, BMC Software, Hyperion, IBM, Sybase and Symantec, Lyris, VMWare, Oracle, and Elluminate. These are just software products that either I deal with on a regular basis or came up with in a quick search.

Why, if Debian is the best development platform in existance, would that be the case? Debian Stable changes at least as infrequently as RHEL, so it shouldn't be a matter of code stability.

Perhaps your dealings with RedHat based distributions have been less than plesant, but if you want commercial application support, it's either RH or SUSE. Tools for dealing with RPMs have advanced quite a bit in the last 5 years, and FWIW, I have no problems getting a bo

"Does it immediately evict the old versions to the "undo" space during a transaction and direct other clients to it?"

The data is updated in place, but a the old row is copied to the undo tablespace. There can be quite a lot of I/O against the undo tablespace. It should be on a fast RAID, or perhaps a separate disk. According to that Tom expert I mentioned, a typical configuration is to put it on a RAID 0+1 ("rollback" is kind of the old name):

o raid 0+1 for rollback. It get written to lots. It is important to have protected. We cannot multiplex them so let the OS do it. Use this for datafiles you believe will be HEAVILY written. Bear in mind, we buffer writes to datafiles, they happen in the background so the poor write performance of raid 5 is usually OK except for the heavily written files (such as rollback).

source

It is true that something like vacuuming needs to be done under the hood - really it's just that the undo data needs to be purged so the undo tablespace does not grow indefinitely. I don't believe old undo data gets much "in the way" because it is not scanned like a table. (I'd have to bring out the docs to give you more detail.) You can set an UNDO_RETENTION parameter which is the number of seconds to retain the undo info for each transaction. You may want to keep this data around for a long time, even after your transaction is finished, to allow for flashback querying (basically "select * from mytable as of 2 days ago" or "flashback table mytable to last week").

What's most important IMO is that updates don't create clutter in the table itself. In Oracle, if you update 1000 rows, all other users are directed to undo if they query the same 1000 rows - for the length of your transaction only. Keep in mind that the undo data will likely be found in memory, in the buffer cache. It needs to be on disk too, though, in case of an instance failure - when you start up the database instance it will rollback all in-progress transactions.

In Postgres, if you update those 1000 rows all other users are directed to the dead tuples - again these blocks are likely in the buffer cache. I don't believe there is any performance difference here. BUT, when your transaction finishes and the dead tuples are still in the way, that's when the Postgres way becomes a problem. Now imagine 1000 rows are updated by a different user every few minutes. It piles up. A regular VACUUM will reclaim the space, but your table may still be fragmented. There is another command, VACUUM FULL, which will compact the table to a minimum number of blocks, however this is a much slower operation and requires an exclusive lock on the table, i.e. you don't want to VACUUM FULL during active hours.

"The Sony story is really quite interesting -- I had no idea that there were major MMORPG's running on postgres! (though a highly modified version no doubt):"

Agreed - we're talking Everquest II and Star Wars Galaxies! I've been meaning to check out EnterpriseDB but haven't had the time...

Larger commercial software products, like games, database systems, or what-have-you are not touched by this issue.

Add in that Bindings for MySQL are available for just about every language.

Caveat: those bindings link against GPLed libraries. It's not possible to use MySQL as a backend to proprietary applications without shelling out some cash. Whether that is good or bad is another issue. Note that even Oracle allows restribution of their client libraries under those conditions; this restriction seems to be unique to MySQL.

> This is rather vague. Specifically, what do you require in your application that PostgreSQL does not offer?

The initial point is about the DBMS, not the application specifically. An effective DBMS will hide, to some extent, the very large and HA implications from the application.

The following is a comparison to DB2 LUW to Oracle's DataGuard. (Postgres roughly falls into the same column as DB2 in this context.) http://www.oracle.com/technology/deploy/availabili ty/htdocs/DataGuardHADR.html

[ granted the app in this specific case would need to know what DB to fail over to. ]

Some may throw up the answer in Postgres is to install triggers everywhere to get this done. Anyone who does that is is missing the point. Does everyone need multisite, multiple point in time failover databases? No. Do some folks? yes.

"They are delivering no innovation, delayed patches, delayed releases, no real knowledge of open source and no involvement with the community, so where is the value?" he asked.

What about Oracle Mail? Claims to be a better Exchange.

If the cost difference we're talking about here is simply the licensing/upgrading cost, it's worth noting that several of the popular "mega expensive" database platforms offer free (as in $0) versions - albeit with certain functionality removed.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
Only supports databases up to 4GB, and is lacking the built-in task scheduler, and most of the high-availability and business intelligence features, but is perfectly usable for small-to-mid-sized applications/web sites. Plus you can upgrade later to one of the fancier versions if necessary.

Oracle 10g Express Edition
I haven't had a chance to play with this yet, but it looks similar to SQL Server Express in terms of features and limitations.

IBM DB2 Express-C
I don't really know anything about this one. I just now found it in a fit of "I wonder..." The product comparison pages don't really say much about it, but they'll send it to you free on a DVD, so that's pretty neat.

Sybase ASE Express
Never used this one either. It seems to be only for Linux.

Though honestly, from what I've seen of Postgre, I'd almost think that one would be worth looking into more so than these for small systems. One of these days I'll get around to experimenting with it. The advantage with the Express Editions is, however, that you don't have such a nasty learning curve if you can just jump right in with a database platform you're familiar with from at work. Why else would I do something insane like running php + MS SQL Server? :)

At some point oracle should take a look at their own legal standpoint and community reputation (if Larry Ellison cares about that).
Some basic facts for people to be aware of:
1. Dubious rebuild practices: They seem to be using centos as a buffer to Red Hat. See http://oss.oracle.com/linux/legal/oracle-list.html and search for centos. If you really want to have some fun, grab the centos source, and start matching the typos in the centos patches against the 'oracle developed' patches in their source.
2. Dozens of bloggers and community members are already calling it a failure. see the following for your current opinion: http://ultramookie.com/wayback/2006/10/26/uncompat ible-linux/ http://ultramookie.com/wayback/2006/10/29/do-it-ri ght-oracle/ and http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2006/10/oracle-lookin g-past-ellisons-rhetoric.html

Oracle seems to be walking a very fine line with overall compliance with the GPL. They have taken some patches from centos and removed the user attribution.

Personally, CentOS http://www.centos.org/ has already proven to be a top notch alternative to RHEL, and while there's no indemnification, it works far better than oracle linux seems to at this point, and they provide more community support than oracle seems to want to.

See his keynote at the recent Oracle OpenWorld 2006.

Select his video and then forward to 16:00 min into the talk. He says "most likely the same license as Solaris"... i.e., CDDL. Not GPL.

http://www.oracle.com/openworld/attendees/program- overview/keynotes.html?pageregion=ocom_hp_a_lr_3_k eynote_102406

In one year's time, it's quite possible that Red Hat will have already lost the battle of even just supporting their own product.

I hate to point this out but many commerical products prohibit publicly disclosed benchmarks for example these folks

There's been a fair amount about this in the news recently (and by 'news' I mean slashdot) but it's been discussed and kicked around in some rather interesting detail elsewhere also. Oracle seems to be pulling from other projects already involved in RHEL rebuilds like centos. They're not even bothering to clean up some of the centos release tags. See http://oss.oracle.com/linux/legal/oracle-list.html for verification and look at the artwork package to see what I'm talking about.

There's also some indication that oracle's initial effort wasn't really tested that thoroughly and has some breakage issues. See http://ultramookie.com/wayback/2006/10/26/uncompat ible-linux/ and a comment to that post http://ultramookie.com/wayback/2006/10/26/uncompat ible-linux/#comment-5386 for all the gory details on this. So far I'm completely unimpressed with oracle's offering, and they'd better get their act together if they want this to be anything more than a corporate money-pit. So far it seems rushed, half-baked and unready (not unbreakable). I for one will be sticking with RH for my corporate support, and I will urge others who require redhat support to do the same.

Look I completely agree that one has to start with realistic things. RSS and atom are very simple, and good at what they do: really they just offer very simple file system metadata: see What Atom is all about.

Semantic Web services are a lot more complex. But at least they are RESTful. Now if a large percentage of the population finds its difficult to close xml tags, then they won't be using either atom or anything else. But that does not mean that there are not some very cool things to do in the mashup area.

Oracle is building Semantic Web technology into its database and open source mappers are appearing a little all over the place. See D2RQ as a good example, or Open Link Virtuoso. It's easy to create a mapping, I wrote mine and set up a server in one week.

Concerning ontologies versus tagging, there is no either/or here. It is simple to create a relationship for tagging. Here goes

http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish :tag "semantic", "cool", "blog" .

I have tagged my blog with three tags.

To get back to Tim Berner's Lee's remarks: my thought here is the following:

I think I am getting what this is about: standardise the interpretation of tagsoup.

If every browser interpreted tagsoup identically then one could think of tagsoup as a form of xhmtl. Tagsoup pages would be displayed identically across browsers, and one could work with the resulting xhtml DOM tree.

One major advantage of producing your site in clean xhtml would then simply be that the rendering of a clean xhtml page would be a lot faster, as it would not have to go through the extra translation to xhtml. It would of course be easier to maintain too, as the structure of xhtml would be clearer than whatever weird tagsoup rules end up being decided as the standard ones.

Historically, I'd agree with you. I've installed Oracle on many *nix systems, starting with Solaris more than 10 years ago. The only upside to making such an attempt is that you really feel you've accomplished something when you do manage to get it to work.

But Oracle 10g Express is a breeze to install, at least on RHEL4, which is where I've done so. It is a single rpm. I had no problems with dependencies. You run a configure script and it walks you through the handful of steps, in simple English and you're good to go.

It is a text based script, so none of their Java madness. It starts up the database and the listener. It asks you if you want to have the DB start at bootup. It is just sweet. It even has a simple, well designed web app for management.

Oh, and it is free to use in development and production.

Check it out at http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database /xe/index.html.

--Tim

At the moment for large complex db applications yes. I won't go through the complete list of features as oracle are more than willing to telling you in great detail.

I run postgresql, mysql and oracle in production and there are heaps of things that postgres and mysql can't do that oracle can and I use on a daily basis.

As to whether they are worth the big $$ well that really depends on features, reliability and speed to production your db/applications needs. A simple web app, like slashdot, can get away with just mysql and do really well for years (although they did have to get special modifications made in the early years from what I understand). Where as more complex, time poor development wise applications will need a db that is rock solid(99% of the time once oracle is setup properly and is maintained it will run forever and yes I know people are going to disagree with me on this one) and packed with features right out of the box.

I am not saying that OSS db's are crap they are just not at oracle's level just yet, but I can tell you that oracle is starting to feel the pain from mysql and postgresql on the small db installs.

Nope, parent is incorrect:

http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/ubl-ds.pd f

That's $1199/$1999 *annually*, and "Lifetime" is defined as 5-8 years.

>so the implication it is only copies purchased from RH.

Not really - free download of Oracle-(re)branded RHEL: http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux

>Are people willing to pay twice for contradictory services? And what if Oracle's and Red Hat's upgrades differ? Will that void Red Hat's service contract?

Which part of Oracle Unbreakable Linux don't you understand?
Download is free, right here; http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux/

Surprise!!

http://oraclestore.oracle.com/OA_HTML/ibeCCtpSctDs pRte.jsp?section=11365&media=os_user_minimums

"Most of Oracle products have a minimum user requirement."

It seems a rebranded version of RHEL (a la CentOs). -- Ernest

> I will be very surprised if they offer it as a straight-up substitute for RHEL, available in quantity 1, to everyone with a credit card.

Surprise!!
http://oraclestore.oracle.com/OA_HTML/ibeCZzpHome. jsp?minisite=14405&respid=1435532&grp=STORE&langua ge=US

Oracle to the best of my knowlege is trying to figure out IE7 as best as they can.
Their official blogs are discussing this as well
The list of browsers supported on Oracle 11i Ebusiness Suite is mentioned here
And as of date, IE7 is not a part of it!