Oracle's Infrastructure Now Fully Linux-ized

mbadolato writes "An article over at InformationWeek reports Oracle is aggressively adopting Linux both internally and for its products, despite SCO Group's threats earlier this week that it may sue those who don't pay licensing fees to the company. Chuck Rozwat, an Oracle executive VP, says the company has moved its IT infrastructure to Linux, a year after CEO Larry Ellis issued the mandate. In the coming year, Oracle will move its base development platform to Linux, including putting the open-source operating system on the workstations of 8,000 developers"

Comments

SCO is no real threat

[The No Vlad Zone]

This move should prove to everyone that SCO's claims are complete BS. If a company with the resources like Oracle isn't bothered by their threats then we can assume that their lawyers told them that SCO's claims are baseless. Oracle's products are the mainstay of the database industry and moving to Linux shows that Microsoft does not in fact have a monopoly. If more Linux desktops are deployed Microsoft will become just another software company competing with all the others.

Re:SCO is no real threat

[buffer-overflowed]

Maybe they're taking a calculated risk. They could strongly suspect the claims are baseless, and even if they aren't it's not going to be resolved for a good 2-5 years.

When it is resolved, if SCO does win(and survives bleeding cash from legal fees), the infringing code will be removed and they're fine anyway. If the infringing code can't be removed [unlikely], then they're banking on Linux being a serious competitor around then anyway and worth the liscensing fees circa 2007.

I'd say it's a pretty safe bet.

Re:SCO is no real threat

[mec]

Monday: Red Hat sues SCO.
Thursday: IBM sues SCO.
Friday: Oracle announces commitment to Linux.

This is a good way to do PR: a rolling wave from different sources.

Objectively, it's the same total amount of commitment to Linux whether everybody does it in one day or they do it three weeks apart. But this timing feeds the news cycle better.

I'm hoping that Google will issue a press release soon. And then a behemoth retailer, like Home Depot. And then a brokerage firm, like Merrill Lynch.

What'd they have before?

[groove10]

The article doesn't say what they were runnign before this switch. My hunch is that it was Solaris.

I get the feeling that most large desktop migrations happen from commercial UNIX to linux rather than from Windows to linux. That transition would seem much more difficult and costly.

Also are they using a distribution or are they "rolling their own"?

Re:What'd they have before?

[n3rd]

I get the feeling that most large desktop migrations happen from commercial UNIX to linux rather than from Windows to linux.

Actually Ellison (like McNealy) is a well know Microsoft hater. Althought Linux is one of the best developement environments available I wouldn't be suprised if the decision to swith to Linux was partially out of spite for Microsoft.

Re:What'd they have before?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm posting anonymously because I work for the company in question.

The major platform for development was Solaris (and still is at the current time for me and my group). There have been various projects ongoing for awhile now to migrate the development to be Linux based.
And to address the specific question about migrating from Solaris to Linux (not from Windows), there was a plan being deployed in various groups to change the development environment before the Linux plan. The earlier one was to move to small cheap Windows workstations as 'thin' (ha!) clients to rack Solaris machines.

So, the Linux-based plan still shows a large loss of potential Windows licenses (for all the MS-bashers out there).

8000 developers?

[YetAnotherName]

...and they still can't make an sqlplus client that supports readline.

Yes, I'm trolling. You would too, if you had to deal with Oracle on a daily basis---contractual obligations, you see. (Where's my MySQL when you need it?)

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Oracle in Austin, TX

[Yiliar]

I went for an interview at Oracle in Austin. Being a SUNOS/Solaris person for over 15 years, it was an eye opener to see the Austin facility was nearly 100% Linux.

When I suggested at the beginning of the interview that a person would have to be crazy to want to administer 8,000 diskless Linux servers tied to NetApps storage, the interview prompty ended. :)

My conclusion, however, was that Oracle is indeed committed to Linux. In fact they are betting the company on it.

QANTAS, Linux, Sun, Oracle and MS

[thelandp]

I work at QANTAS (Australia's largest Airline), and we're using Oracle alot, but not using Linux anywhere - we are basically a Solaris shop. The next major changes to our software infrastructure involve commiting more fully to Oracle. That may involve switching to Linux for servers, but probably not for desktops - they will stay as Win NT 4.0.

Now, I think Linux is technically great, and I hate the business practices of Microsoft. However, experience at QANTAS says that for us, Linux is not really any threat to Microsoft, it is much more dangerous to Sun. If we switch over to Linux here, we'll be doing Sun out of business, and Microsoft is unscathed. How is that good for the world?

Adoption of Linux on the desktop is a much bigger threat to Microsoft, and much harder to achieve because of inertia.

So with all the cost savings they're getting

[Flower]

by deploying linux, does it mean they'll pass that along to their customers?

Sometimes I just crack myself up.

Re:MySQL/Oracle = Apple/Orange

[kcbrown]

The only way to edit a column definition is to delete it and readd it with the correct properties, which means taking the DB offline, copying the whole table to a temporary table, deleting the offending column, readding the column, and then moving all of the data back into the old table from the temporary one, and now since your columns are in a different order, you have to play fun games to get that to work right.. then you can delete the temporary table, and put the DB back online, PURE TORTURE.

You, sir, are full of shit. Witness (the output isn't exactly what you'd see because of the crappy lameness filter and the limited Slashdot HTML options):

kevin> \d
No relations found.
kevin> create table foo (x integer, y varchar(20), z float);
CREATE TABLE
kevin> insert into foo (x, y, z) values (2, 'hello', 20.5);
INSERT 16997 1
kevin> select * from foo;
x y z
2 hello 20.5
(1 row)

kevin> begin;
BEGIN
kevin> alter table foo add column z2 integer;
ALTER TABLE
kevin> update foo set z2 = z;
UPDATE 1
kevin> alter table foo drop column z;
ALTER TABLE
kevin> alter table foo rename column z2 to z;
ALTER TABLE
kevin> select * from foo;
x y z
2 hello 20
(1 row)

kevin> \d foo
Table "public.foo"
Column Type Modifiers
x integer
y character varying(20)
z integer

kevin> rollback;
ROLLBACK
kevin> \d foo
Table "public.foo"
Column Type Modifiers
x integer
y character varying(20)
z double precision

So: not only can you do the operation without taking the database down, you can do it while within a transaction, and even rollback the entire change if you screw up!

This is under PostgreSQL 7.3.3.

Try that with your vaunted MySQL.