Slashdot Mirror
Database Business Problems at Oracle?
abb_road writes "Wall Street responded to yesterday's report of a 42% rise in profits by pushing Oracle's stock down. Despite a 77% increase in applications business, investors are worried that Oracle's core database business remains comparatively stagnant. Though Ellison claims that the DB business will grow in double digits over the next few years, it seems that more companies are switching to open source rather than paying Oracle $40,000 a processor."
PostgreSQL is certainly working fine as a Ruby on Rails and Jabber backend for us... maybe I'll worry about it once we get up over a few terabytes, but for now, it's more than capable of handling everything we throw at it.
And good books keep coming out for it, too, which is reassuring.
The Army reading list
As databases such as MySQL, MS SQL and PostgreSQL and others keep adding features and performance the RDBMS are becoming more and more of a commodity market. To be expected.
But my company is looking closely at SqlServer right now. We just went through an Oracle license Inquisition and like the article said, it's about $40k a license or just under $1000 per named user. OTOH we can buy a SqlServer license for around $5k and have as many users as we want. T-Sql is a poor replacement for PL/SQL, but money talks.
Before you go all Slashbot on me, realize that my company is very conservative with respect to technology, so Open Source is unfortunately not an option here...
Well, you could switch to an open source database, and then hire all kinds of brainpower to understand how it works, keep updated on the development, institute updates constantly, search high and low to find someone who can solve the problem that apparently only your company is having... ...or, you could do the exact same thing with Oracle, plus forty large per processor.
This decision isn't that hard to make.
---don't make me break out my red pen.
On the other hand, Oracle has been very generous in allowing developer downloads of their DBMS; I was able to take their Linux port, install it on an old box running Red Hat, and port a Microsoft SQL Server-based back end over to Oracle in a couple of days just as an experiment. Obviously, to actually use the product would cost some bucks but this kind of flexibility is what helps keep Oracle's tentacles in so many businesses.
The other thing that the analysts ignored is that the database and enterprise software business isn't so much about having innovative technology, contrary to what was asserted in the Business Week article but rather having an effective sales organization. DBMS and enterprise management software is sales driven, not innovation driven. Executives don't watch commercials about sexy features in the latest rev of Oracle or Sql Server, then order a few copies from Amazon. It's the inside sales teams that patiently build relationships over the years. IBM knows this, Oracle knows this, and MS knows it too. Sybase tried but their hubris and arrogance brought them down. (direct personal experience with that!)
No doubt, while Larry crows about upcoming tech innovations, he's internally yelling at the sales teams to get more aggressive, offer more discounts, and steal more customers from Bill and from the SAP people. He'll eke out a few more percentage points of market share, and the investors will be satisfied for a couple more quarters. That's how the business works.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
I've heard a lot of debate about Postgresql vs. MySql that doesn't need to be re-hashed for the 1000'th time. On the other hand, I haven't heard much on Oracle vs. Postgresql. I have used Postgresql quite a bit, and think it's wonderful.
What is Postgresql missing that Oracle has? What does Oracle have that Postgres is missing? When do these features matter?
Let the flaming begin...
Do we have to stoop to this to make our point?
You can get Oracle server for as cheap as $150 per named user, with a three user minimum last I checked. This is perfect for many small business applications. And there are pricing schemes that gradually go up from there depending on the situation.
There are many great open source databases ( I use SQLite extensively ), but the commercial vendors still bring a lot to the table, and sometimes are even the best choice all things considered ( gasp! )
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
There are other Databases out there other then the open souce ones that compete with Oracle. Like Microsoft SQL Server, which is much cheaper then Oracle too, well almost anything is cheaper then Oracle, It may not be comparible to Oracle but most companies don't need that much power for them databases sizes in the 100 thousands are large databases for them and MS SQL works for them, plus it integrates with their Windows apps a little easier. I am not saying the Open Source alternatives are better or worse, but most companies and government agancies I have been to who got off Oracle switched to MS SQL server, and most of them do not use MySQL, Postgre or ThunderBird (which makes me think of an email browser).
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The only companies who can afford $40k a processor are very large companies. How many very large companies have been popping up lately? No wonder the growth of their DB business is slow.
WTF? Are AMD processors free?
As in beer? - NO!!!
As in speech? - NO!!!
You got your oranges mixed in with my apples. Stop that!
I wonder what the situation would be if the likes of MySQL, PostGreSQL and other OSS DBs were not around. I guess Microsoft and IBM would be laughing their way to the bank every year.
Are we witnessing the beginning of an era where ALL software will be open source?
Other than commercial support, is there any reason to use Oracle over MySQL?
This is one of the areas where I think that Open Source can really shine, and it's interesting to see how the mindshare of Open Source database software is growing.
When you look at software purchasing patterns, it seems that most software purchases are driven by four things: cost, features, familiarity, and "safety." Open Source software usually competes strongly on the first, moderately well on the second, and not so well on the third and fourth. Asking DBAs to use something they're not familiar with means that they're going to be working slower and harder--not the choice that most people make. In addition, the "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" syndrome sometimes prevents Open Source choices from getting a fair shake. But it appears that Open Source tools are starting to compete on those last two fronts as well.
A lot of geeks like to fiddle around with software on their own, and the "free" part of Open Source plays right to this. After all, are you going to pay for a Microsoft Sequel Server license, or try out MySQL when you're doing something for your own satisfaction? I'm a good example of something similar: I wanted some dynamic Web pages, but I didn't want to pay for ASP support through my ISP. So instead I started looking into PHP and eventually wound up using PHP to handle the dynamic content.
Once people involved in making decisions (not perhaps the decision-makers themselves, but people with input) start using Open Source for themselves, a lot of the "I don't know it so it's harder and slower" goes right out the window. Sure your average CRM developer might not be making the decision, but if they're asked about DB support and they know PostgreSQL because that's what they used to build their roll-your-own blog, they may offer that as an option.
As Open Source comes into use in the market, that helps alleviate the "safety" factor, too. When you can point to a large organization that's successfully running enterprise-grade applications on Open Source, it's easier for the decision makers to rationalize choosing an Open Source solution.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
And if you're negotiating with Oracle directly, something I do not recommend, then all you have to do is mention mySQL or PostgreSQL, and Oracle will drop their prices.
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
Sure, Oracle Enterprise has a $40k per CPU listing price, but let's be realistic. NOBODY pays $40k a CPU and maintenance and services. Not that I'm defending Oracle or their draconian pricing model, but in the end, Oracle can provide close to turn-key solutions when it comes to providing the product, escalating problems to engineering, custom solutions, consulting, deployment, implementation, long-term support. Combine that with Oracle's impressive feature list and the fact that most of the money that a company will spend on their database IT will NOT be DBMS licensing fees and you can see why upper management will spend thousands of dollars on a feature set that might very well be served by an open-source solution.
I am sure that there are many consulting firms that can mimick this kind of turn-key solution using PostgreSQL, but I'm not sure that they are as established--that is, give the CEO of XYZ company the warm & fuzzy that they require when they're about to undertake a multi-million dollar project whose backbone has to be a rock-solid DBMS.
It would be fabulous if Vault 10 IT consulting firms could provide this level of service using open source but that's just not the case Right Now(tm).
The main use for ultra scalable, ultra high-performance databases is for the core transactional DB of a large-scale app. Most apps that serve the other 80% of the DB needs don't need to be Oracle-grade. MS Sql Server or PostrgessSQL are a perfect fit. In fact, for the vast majority of companies, even their main transactional DB doesn't need to be Oracle-grade.
Basically a database is only used to keep data. Sometimes the data is vital to the business other times it is not. Databases move toward becoming more and more a commodity, just like everything else. It's a market where it's difficult to difference yourself.
Oracle is a very good database, no doubt about that, but what is the need of the business? As hardware becomes less and less expensive the performance and stability of the database becomes less of a differentiator.
It is true the market for databases is growing, but it is not the high-end database market. Especially now that the definition of high-end is moved up by the availability of less expensive hardware. It is better to spend money on good hardware, backup and storage, rather than on the database license.
So why by an oracle database? Only if you need the really high end performance of your database, that outranks the affordable hardware, you'll need to look at products like oracle.
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
An old adage says that yachts are for people who have so much money, they don't know what else to spend it on.
So I don't think it matters what side of the coin they are on, executives, in this case the end users executives, would rather spend their money on their own (albeit smaller) yachts than on an expensive closed source RDBMS. If they can get the same functionality and (some say lack of) support as Oracle with a BSD or GPL licensed RDBMS, then eventually they will move there.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Thunderbird is an email client, Firebird is the terrific open-source database.
To understand the problem of migration - and why it's not happening right away - you have to look bit deeper inside. Business can count money. But it's just at time Oracle had more or less best offer on the market. Business can migrate data - but applications which are written with Oracle in mind - take much longer time to port over to MySQL/PostgreSQL. I witnessed that couple of times.
BTW, most of the biggest installations of MySQL I have seen, were all in companies active users of Oracle. Moving data from Oracle to MySQL is fast (in fact vary vary vary fast - MySQL has outstanding INSERT performance). Porting application stack over to MySQL's relatively poor API - is completely different story.
I have less experience with PostgreSQL. I've seen couple of applications using it - but nothing worth retelling. At times I was piloting sql servers for my work - PgSQL have had several limitations we couldn't have overcome at application level, thus I went with MySQL. Probably others can fill the blank.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
ConsultingFair.com
These other companies (potential Oracle clients) have a responsibility to their stockholders to maximize their ROI. If they find high-quality, low-cost / no-cost open alternatives they would be crazy not to follow upon them.
This kind of analogy is no different than an individual buying a better-deal Honda over a GM car or shopping at Walmart instead of Ma-n-Pa's Shop-Of-Over-Priced Sundries.
Of course many will point the finger-of-evil at Walmart and Honda but that brings two other questions to mind-
How large does an entity have to be before folks begin to consider it evil?
Does it only apply if they MAKE money?
Things that make ya go "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm."
I usually hate open source because it is anti-capitalist, however, if it can help "companies" I find myself in uncharted territory. They have to act in the best interests of their companies and their clients too. What a fine little web we weave.
Cogito Ergo Sum
WE recently have asked a vendor to see if they can change their product from SQL2000 to postgreSQL or MySQL as the $12,000.00 per processor license we pay for SQL2000Enterprise is more than it would be to hire a OSS DB admin that only takes care of the Database server and then still save 30% after paying someone full time plus benefits.
Many companies are done with the high ticket low support even on low end hardware such as a 4 processor 16 gigabyte SQL server. we are forced to Enterprise if we want to use the >4Gig ram which makes a huge difference. so Either we stare at $48,000 in SQL license fees per server or find something else. Hell at that price we can probably get our application completely rewritten to our specs and own it by outsourcing to india.
For that sort of money you can use OSS and hire a well trained support dude.
Man thats expensive. Tho i hear Microsoft SQL2005 will be approaching the same ( silly ) cost levels.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So Oracle is losing business to open source alternatives because one part of one company is switching to EnterpriseDB and because of an anecdotal quote?
Wow. Spare me the spin.
Isn't it also possible that the far cheaper closed source alternatives are getting a little business as well?
Oracle has always been pricey, but for a long time their DB features were hard to beat. Competitors, both closed and open, and finally getting to the point where they are on all levels with Oracle.
i.e. the UDB fiasco. Now we ditched the Oracle on Solaris/HP and use Linux so we get the best of both worlds... open source on the OS and a reliable database for mission critical apps.
$40k per processor is "list price". In reality, there are other options, such as Kunta Kinte points out.
Further, the kinds of companies that have huge investments in data centers (Oracle's primary target) negotiate volume contracts with Oracle. These contracts push that $40k sticker price way way way down. (Previous employer paid under $20k for a typical Oracle server license, unlimited users, no time limits.)
Considering that these companies really need their data, and have hundreds of applications (not all of them even cataloged) already written to use Oracle, this money is just basic business expense.
Don't forget the cost of a DBA who knows how to work with Oracle in that price. Oracle isn't going to buy you much for performance if you don't have a DBA who knows how to make use of it. Presumably you'll need a DBA anyhow, but it's going to be far cheaper to find somebody who has general database knowledge than somebody who's an expert in the finer points of Oracle tuning.
not speaking of the BSD license... before you jump up and down about how great it is that big money is using open source technologies, keep in mind that the likes of r. stallman doesn't like integration of open source software with proprietary software. As you can see there is much restrictions in the latest GPL v3. in light, i ask you, what about v4, v5, v6, etc??? in time, we'll see less articles of this nature, because businesses won't want to worry about the legality of integrating their software with open source software, assuming os developers embrace these restrictive licesnses. This is really a shame too, since many companies do contribute to popular open source software. With the above, I think we'll see more of a divide of what peoples' beliefs on what TRUE open source software is, and isn't. a BSD vs GPL vX, if you will..
Look - I'm as much an open source fan as anyone, but the fact is that the $40,000 figure is misleading. Oracle's so-called Standard Edition One is basically the full thing - it just can't do clustering, and can't do more than two processors.
I'm sure someone will point out another nitpick that it can't do, but the practical fact is that you can buy Standard Edition One for $5000/processor and get a fully functional database.
For the price-aware, you can even buy a 1, 2, or 3 year license for something like $2-3K.
And, no, Oracle isn't paying me to shill for them. I just work for a company that uses Oracle, and I hate to see the "Oracle costs $40,000" meme repeated here.
You OSS zealots continue to sound ignorant and uninformed by claiming this or that open source product is free. Yeah, yeah, one smart guy can work miracles with freely downloaded stuff in a small setting. In the context of a large enterprise, where lots of people need to support very large databases, nothing is free. The initial cost of the software product is microsocpic when compared to the real TCO. And by the way, 40K is bullshit. I'm at a Fortune 100 and we pay far less than that. The Silver support is what is damned expensive, if you want to take issue over cost.
Oracle's strong points over PG:
:) (probably including support) ;) (easier migration)
- speed
- mutli-way replication
- multi-node clusters
- advanced SQL (cubes, trees, etc)
- finer details of physical data layout (cluster tables, partitioned tables, etc)
- stability (unless you use the bleeding edge, which is brittle, alas)
PG's strong points Oracle:
- price
- relative simplicity and lower resource consumption
- easier administration
- good compatibility with Oracle's SQL
- source availability
Also, PG is perceived as less stable than Oracle, and even less than MySQL. It will take time to dispel this (if untrue).
Computers make very fast, very accurate mistakes
Don't shout about 40k per proc - that's for the enterprise licenses... and ONLY on large boxen.
The "free" edition is that - free with a machine size/data volume limit.
The "Standard Edition One" is prolly the most compelling - $5k per proc LIST. Can only run on Dual proc boxen and can't cluster. Has ALL the features of enterprise besides that.
There is another edition in between that allows bigger boxen and clustering but misses out on some of the uber fancy stuff in enterprise (which, while cool - isn't stuff you use day-to-day).
The standard Edition One came out ~2yrs ago - they're trying to work in the shops/price range where SQLServer usually lives. And seriously, you can push a lot of data through a big dually with enough ram. Not going to support 50 million users - but both SQLServer and Oracle will do an awful lot on a properly configured Dual proc server.
That said - the previous poster was right - if you're paying retail you're nuts, and couldn't negotiate your way out of a paper sack.
I use MySQL, SQLServer, and Oracle on a fairly regular basis in different places, and for vanilla stuff A RDMS is a commodity service.
Until you're using your ERP to generate 4+MB sql statements (a supported feature in the latest DB2 version), or are doing some really ornery stuff, the DB is just a place to dump data. They all let you do backups etc, provide reasonable management tools etc. (Oracle does have some REALLY cool features from a DBA's standpoint that are missing in MySQL et al.)
Dev styles are different in different shops - if you're an "All CRUD/LOGIC in stored procs" shop then the lang in the DB (TSQL vrs PL/SQL) might be important to your devs... but if you are working on relative DB independence or working on portable COTS software, a DB is just another service.
No I don't work for Oracle.
I think it was a Playboy interview with Ellison in which he mentioned that he was all for a national ID system. I couldn't help but think then that he was for it because a) he is uber-rich so privacy concerns don't bother him, and b) it would create HUGE gov't contracts for high end database firms... like his. Now, there are plans to create a nationwide database system for tracking IDs, and Ellison is saying their business is going to expand in the next few years... maybe I'm just grasping at straws here, but the coincidences frightening.
Oracle has a couple initiatives going on... RAC and ASM. Here's about how it works (these are BROAD numbers, mind you).
.com crash, your average back-end IT infrastructure had a few main pieces:
6 years ago, before the
Cisco networking gear. Sun servers. EMC disks. Oracle database.
So you paid a few mil for the network. A few mil for the servers. A few mil for the EMC disks. And a mil or two for Oracle at $10K/cpu (list)
NOW, Oracle says "we have 10g RAC, use us to replicate across CPUs. Don't pay $3M + $1M/year for Sun support... buy a rack of Linux servers (or blades) and hardware costs $250K versus $3M... support is nearly free because if a machine fails, just pull it from the rack, throw it in the trash, and swap a new one in there.'
And lo, they promoted "Linux is unbreakable" and charged an extra $10K/cpu for this service. Total end cost to customer is LESS than the old solution, and it's way FASTER.
Then, they have another initiative... use ASM and the low-cost storage initiative... use the database to span multiple disks, and handle all the replication/redundancy. Don't pay EMC $3M + $1M/year for Symmetrix support. Put it on lower cost gear (Clariion, Nexsan ATAboy, or *gasp* Apple Xserve RAID even). Spindle speeds are slower, so you buy 2x as many spindles and get the same IOPS. Hey, you save a couple million and pay more per CPU (say $40K/cpu list) for the whole shootin' match.
So your cost goes from (again, broad numbers)
$2M Cisco + $3M Sun + $3M EMC + $2M Oracle = $10M + maintenance
to:
$2M Cisco + $500K Dell + $500K Dell or Apple + $4M Oracle = $7M + maintenance
You save $3M a year! Of course Oracle gets a bigger cut. But it's "win-win."
Of course, there is the one subtlety here -- you are now using Oracle's RAC and ASM so you can use cheap hardware and storage. This stuff is totally proprietary, so if Oracle comes back come renewal time and doubles your per-CPU cost for the software, it's a helluva lot harder to rip it out than just porting stored-procedure code.
...it's been 18 months since we tried to switch to PG, so the situation could be different now. Back then, for our apps, oracle absolutely kicked the hell out of PG. it was faster by 100x most of the time, and 1000x occasionally. i asked our senior DBM to analyze the situation, and according to him, PG needs a lot of fine tuning to really get high performance, while oracle (by default) seems to be able to cache the right things in memory, out of the box. so this is just one example, and i know that, but i wonder how many other shops have experienced this?
We're using SQL Server for quite large DBs without any troubles. Mostly with apps developped in-house, lately it's all C#/.NET 2.0/N-Tier apps, and we're using LLBLGen Pro to speedup development (very cheap for all the time it saves). Couldn't be happier. It scales pretty well from what we've seen so far. The dev tools are great. Good features out of the box (no need for tons of overpriced addons for things like OLAP). Very stable. Sustains a decent load (real live users and load testing) for the hardware it runs onto. No complains really. Despite all the anti-MS trolls here (you know I'll be accused of astroturfing too - inevitable when you say good things about MS products here - even when it's deserved), I think you'll be quite happy with it.
.NET we chose SQL Server instead. Either ways it'll be cheaper than Oracle in every way you can look at it.
Oracle is ridiculously expensive, and requires a team of highly paid DBAs to keep running and such. We were quite happy to ditch it. We also looked at DB2, which we probably would have picked if our work was Java, but everything new being in
We also have some small things running on PostgreSQL, and the odd dinky php script using MySQL because we didn't bother porting it to another DB (too much MySQL specific SQL junk hardcoded). The day LLBLGen Pro supports PostgreSQL we might move even more stuff to it.
But Oracle? Not in a lifetime. Not anymore. Never. Not a chance.
That was pretty much exactly the grandparent's point.
Oracle's been trying to diversify itself for many years. Databases have largely become commodity items, and the high-end features will all be duplicated for $0 in very short order. They know this, and so have bought InnoDB, BerkeleyDB, etc., in order to say "we 'get' open-source".
... - you name a business function and Oracle has something to offer. Why do you think they've been eating PeopleSoft (along with the former JD Edward), Siebel, and so forth? Add in their consulting revenues, and you get a big chunk of change. This is why Oracle consultants tend to wear Armani suits.
Actually, a big piece of Oracle's revenue (approaching 50% these days) is in applications. Accounting, finance, HR, manufacturing, sales,
Oracle wants to get to a place where the database is a means to an end, not an end in itself. They just happen to own a good database product and are leveraging it to the max. But they know that the future isn't in databases, so when someone complains that their core competency is being eaten away, they'll reply "yes, we know...that's why we're diversifying, in part by buying all of this other stuff". So if people complain that their database biz is declining, well duh...
(BTW, to pre-empt the inevitable pedantic nitpicking, the ">" character in the title of this post is a "greater than" symbol. It doesn't mean redirect stdio, or anything like that.)
I suspect that MS SQL server hill be hit harder than Oracle by OS databases. It seems that small and midsized companies are more likely to run on SQL server. These businesses are also able to make the move to an open source db more easily.
Larger businesses run Oracle with some sort of ERP system in place. These companies face much larger costs to switch data structure and have lower tolerance for risk. Also, the ERP creates a nice buffer for Oracle...
"Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the f-ing Peace Corps." - John 'Bluto' Blutarsky
However, I'm using PostgreSQL now because I keep running into problems with the Oracle server. The listener isn't listening to the network, so I only have local access and I need to share the data with others.
Having tried to install Oracle on all sorts of operating systems over the years it has been my experience that it really helps to run OracleDB on one of the certified Linux distributions: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS/ES. Oracle does not guarantee that an OracleDB will run smoothly on any random Linux distro. According to their latest installation guide they only test it on the above two although AFAIK some versions were also certified for United Linux. If you don't have the budget to buy one of those Enterprise Linux distros try to find one that is binary compatible with one of them such as Centos. Using Red Had Fedora or Open SUSE is not to guaranteed to result in a smooth installation and a stable OracleDB system. This is not to say that you can't install Oracle on your favorite uncertified distro sucessfully. You simply run the risk of running into problems that may take you a long time to solve and that you would be rid of if you used a certified Enterprise distro or an open source distro that is binary compatable with the SUSE or RedHat Enterprise Linux distros. Developers and researchers unlike hobbyists usually have better things to do than deal with problems resulting from software compatability issues.
The inevitable result of wave after wave of cost cutting is that we have a fraction of the manpower we need to do our work, so some things just don't happen. We used to have two DBA's locally and everything was efficient. Now we have part of one whose work hours rarely overlap with mine, so getting things done is painful.
Why does that sound familiar????
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Now you may think, "What does Oracle care about such a small website?" Well, if I'm using mysql on my own projects, then I'm much more likely to use them at work.
The trick here is to offer a high degree of compatibility for low end databases--at the level of :
1) language compatibility(same SQL dialect)
2) connection compatiblity(i.e. ability to use an Oracle ODBC driver or
C/C++/Java program written in for Oracle using their libraries).
At that point, the "cash cows" for Oracle go away. I for one, think Oracle needs to die.
hsqldb is lgpl and it completely whips up low end. When your app hits the big-time and you need enterprise replication, go postgres. No worries.
Ellison will see the sun set on his db dollars. Investors aren't as ill-informed as Larry (the lounge lizard?) wishes. Sell.
You are correct, there are relatively few companies who can afford to drop $40k per CPU on Oracle licenses. Of course, if you're buying Oracle Enterprise you'll also most likely be running the database on some pretty powerful, clustered, SMP machines, which just drives the costs up even higher. And you'd be retarded to buy that many Oracle licenses with no support contract, and the Gold contract is the minimum for getting any useful support from Oracle (last time I bought licenses, anyway). So you're looking at a real cost of somewhere close to $45k per license with hardware and support, assuming you're buying some fairly generic hardware. Bump that up to around $50k per license if you decide you have to run on a Sun T1 or something equally exotic.
Of course, once you've spent this money, you never have to spend it again. Because at $40k/license you are buying perpetual EE licenses. If you plan to run on Oracle for a long time, that's not really a tough pill to swallow. Oracle also sells 2- and 4-year licenses if you don't want to make such a big commitment and they'll even give you some pretty steep discounts to get your initial business. But that recurring cost hurts, and makes it harder to be able to afford to upgrade to a perpetual license.
I think the perpetual licenses are priced so high because Oracle doesn't want you to buy them. They make a lot more money over time on recurring license sales than they do just selling you something once. I'm sure Oracle would *love* to sell only subscription-style licenses because of the disincentive to switch to another RDBMS, but they need to offer perpetual licenses to huge clients like financial institutions and governments. These are the guys that can afford them, and for those enormous clients Oracle is willing to sacrifice the steady flow of income from the DB software for the steady flow of income from support, especially since it's not too hard to get into extra-charge territory with Oracle support.
Anyway, now that I've gone completely away from my original point, here it is: Oracle Standard supports just about all of the most commonly needed functionality from a database, and it's $15k per processor for a perpetual license. That's for a DB that will support up to 1000 users, 500GB of data, clustering, and all the fancy RDBMS acrobatics you'd need for a small-to-medium sized business. And the Oracle salespeople have pretty broad authority to discount even those licenses. So, let's not assume that the cost of Oracle is constant at $40k/CPU, because the vast majority of Oracle's biggest potential growth market is already well targeted with the much less expensive Standard Edition.
I'm not surprised by the slow growth in Oracle's DB business, either. For years our sales rep was consistently focused on getting us to buy more DB licences - if you listened to the sales reps you'd think you need a dedicated machine running Oracle for every app you develop or use. Recently, though, they've been telling us we should consolidate our database needs into a small cluster and start addressing our business needs. With Oracle software, of course. *Expensive* Oracle software.
One more thing - on review, the tone of this post seems decidedly pro-Oracle. I'm not. I'm in the middle of migrating our databases from Oracle to PgSQL. If anyone else is doing this too, and just in the first phases, drop me a Slashdot message; I've got a small PHP program which reads Oracle schemas, including triggers, functions, and procedures, and emits PgSQL DML to replicate your schema on a PgSQL 8.x+ DB.
Arr! The laws of physics be a harsh mistress!
"Basically a database is only used to keep data."
Wow how simple can you get. Databases are not simply "buckets" of data you reach in a scoop stuff up bad GUI's and crappy SQL.
Database are Relational Database Managment Systems. Oracle inparticular has capabilities that 99% of the programmers no desire to taek advantage of. Remeber a application is only as reliable as the database platform is sits on. Misssion critical high trasaction apps need fast time to recovery rates form hardware failure. Many databases fall woefully short in terms of providing the level of granular control and tuning that Oracle does...or the flexibility in recovery.
I don't buy this "commodity" nonsence. But it doesn't surprise me any more as the state of reliability is going right down the crapper thanks to software design that "empowers" the user to screw up the data with a few mouse clicks. And programmers are writing code that bypasses many RDBMS inegrity features. Programmers aren;t concerned with performqnce or reliability when they create applications that give the "joe six pack" user the aility to destroy company data in two mouse clicks.
I've been looking at ERP systesm of late and frankly it is pretty frightening what I am seeing.
The theme thus far is not one of reliability and integrity but of neato ad-hoc query from every screen, Excel like grids everywhere...that will dunmp tens of thousands of rows into excel and access database where bewildered business users will lock ever little buinsess rule into Access and Excel spreadsheets that are undocumented and bizarrely complex.
With application construction going the direction it is who needs a database. Just dump it to a text files and load it into a spread sheet.....hell just open it in notepad.
the day will come when the DBA's are gone and the database stops and no one will even know what that is because it is just a "commodity".
"Hi thanks for calling StoopIDTech Software. You can't access your application data? Run the data recovery wizard from the help menu and that should fix the problem. Thank You. Have a nice day!"
To really get clustered stability out of Oracle you really need a third party clustered filesystem.
What exactly do you envision as a stable Oracle cluster? Specifically, what is the host OS, and what is the third-party clustered filesystem for that OS?
Thanks!
While it may be true that the SQL database market has become a commodity market, SQL databases have never solved object persistence nicely: SQL always remained a foreign language in Java and C#. The object-relational mismatch has forced us to write billions of lines of code over and over again.
q /
e .html
Alternate technologies are currently seeing a revival:
- A new portal on object databases was recently launched:
http://www.odbms.org/
- Object databases are going open source:
http://www.db4o.com/
- Microsoft has released LINQ to relieve developers from having to write SQL strings. Code that interfaces with the database is now checked at compile time:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/future/lin
- Native Queries show that Java and C# can be directly used to express typesafe queries:
http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=9948/ddj0602e/0602
db4o - open source object database for Java and
No, but the UltraSPARC T1 is free as in speech (but not beer, though it is still really cheap).
Sometimes people choose open-source for the wrong reasons. There is always a myth that open-source is good. But look at Google. Do they open their sources? No. But everybody uses -- not because it is open-source but because it is good and free. Even if they open their sources, how many people outside of
e /xe/index.html
Google can understand their search technology to handle it? They really don't need to open their sources. Instead, they just need to make their platform available for developers and hackers build stuff on. In fact, it is more often the second-tier softwares which try to open their sources with a hope to gain acceptance in the market.
So people don't really need open source. What they truly concern is the cost. That's why Postgres SQL or MySQL were attractive. There is no more reason for those users to choose Postgres SQL or MySQL because Oracle has also made its database available for free for any use -- Oracle 10g Express Edition
(Oracle 10g XE). It is the same database technology as its enterprise-level database at zero cost.
Check out Oracle 10g XE at http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/databas
I don't know, in my line of work (Data Warehousing) where I need to move around large amounts of data, no amount of tuning beats a large amount of spindles.i ng.html ) in their 5.1 beta VERY interesting.
In that regard, I find the new advances that MySQL is making on table partitioning (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/partition
[warning: shameless plug ahead!]
If you combine this with my own Free/free open source ETL tool Kettle (http://www.kettle.be/ ) you can build your data warehouse just as fast or faster than most commercial ETL tools.
The deal then becomes very simple: spend the money you save on licensing on hardware! You'll be amazed at the results...
Oh, and try the Pentaho (http://www.pentaho.org/ ) open source BI solution while you're at it...
Cheers,
Matt
News about the Kettle Open Source project: on my blog
Oracle $40,000 a processor
SQL Server 2005 enterprize is 26000 and Standard is 6000. Now I know it is not as good as Oracle for huge volume databases. But if a company wants a commercial DB Oracle really has priced themselves too high for most uses. I think DB2 and Sybase are cheaper as well but I don't know the exact pricing.
that fact is a database should be chosen for the applications and users that it will support. if your environment needs 24/7 uptime, hot backups, sox compliance, sophisticated recovery schemes, etc., the choice is oracle. if you need a database to store some usernames and passwords for your little website, the choice is mysql.
i like mysql, but i'd be in deep you know what if i used it for some of the critical applications that i support.
OracleXE is a pretty nice product for your under 4gb database running only 1GB in Memory. It is also packaged with HTML DB 2.0. With with a little work can meet many institution's reporting needs in a little database application. You still get the cool stuff like PL/SQL and SQL reports or the dummy click here for data columns. Backing up is an issue that needs not to be ignored (you have to do it the way the only way or your shit out of luck). Database dumps don't cut it in the case of htmldb . It works fine for your data but not your applications (especially if the DBA accidentally deletes your workspace...)
My 2 cents.
That just goes to show you...
If government bureaucrats Like Cheney would just privatize these things it would be much more efficient.
Why I'm sure that a private sector professional would have been able to shoot many more than one friend with a 28-gauge shotgun.
These politicians have to learn more about the inevitability of free market economics.
I was an Oracle zealot for years, as they are one of the few commercial DBs to support OpenVMS. We migrated to a Windows based server in 2001 (I didn't bless it, the boss likes windows). Regardless, over the last few years I have noticed a significant decline it the quality of their support. We had memory leaks that put our data at risk which they never assisted is resolving. We've received solutions suggestions from them that just plain didn't work, and the shrinking pool of engineering resources they offer bring little to no value to the table. You can't continue to charge that type of cash without walking the walk. We are a global presence of over 70,000 users. SQL Server became the Enterprise Architecture recommended DB as a result of their crappy lip service and waning technical attention. You reap what you sow guys...
They discontinued OraclePowerObjects just as I lauched a product based on it, and they discontinued OS/2 support just after I launched a product based on it.
Never again would I run mission critical stuff on proprietry software!
If I wanted to put my head in a lion's mouth, I would have worked in a circus!
Larry Ellison: You do not get customers by smacking people round the face with a wet fish!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
If you want to you can run your Oracle app on Enterprise DB (http://www.enterprisedb.com/) a commercially supported Postgresql based RDBMS with a fraction of the price of an Oracle license. Apparently "EnterpriseDB runs most applications written for Oracle unchanged".
Although I still think Opensource databases are the future it is nice to know there is a smooth migration path away from Oracle.
Moving data from Oracle to MySQL is fast (in fact vary vary vary fast - MySQL has outstanding INSERT performance).
You know about dropping indexes before bulk updates, right? And batching your inserts in transactions, so you don't get the transaction overhead for every single insert?
MySQL may very well have fast inserts (myisam or innodb tables, btw?), but most people i see praising it don't know jack shit about dbs..
I see a lot of comments here debating the relative merits and costs of Oracle's DBs versus PostGreSQL, MySQL and MS SQL Server. I don't believe those toys are Oracle's main competitors; they aren't in the same ballpark. In my experience, IBM's DB2 most certainly is in Oracle's league, if not ahead in some respects, but I see almost no mention of it here.
Does anyone have any experiences to share comparing Oracle's DB with a proper DB like DB2, rather than those other toys?
Once they get you aboard, you get to pay exponentially more. Plus there's the never-friendly, never available Oracle sales staff, who aren't there to help you with the licensing agreements that change radically every six months and sometimes more often. Oracle makes you use hardware that's ten times as expensive as you need, and when it does work, is miles slower than MySQL on the same gear.
Dog is my co-pilot.
Yes, Oracle DB core is really great. However, who really need bazillion of terabytes database? The answer is -- only few hundreds companies, no more. Usually people are fine with PgSQL and MySQL.
Ah, there are Sybase: cheaper than Oracle, 100x times better developer tools than Oracle offers and it keeps the world biggest database.
While there are "free" versions of closed-source apps, they are in response to the need to gain mindshare. In addition, a lot of those "lite" versions are limited.
I know that MSDE had a limitation on the number of simultaneous connections and the total size of the database. If you have to choose between something free and unlimited, and something free that has built-in limitations, which one would you pick?
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
I usually hate open source because it is anti-capitalist,
;-), and VMWare).
Unlike the self-protected multi-national mega-corp pseudo-monopolies? Hah!
Personally, I find Open Source is ideologically as capitalist as it gets. Freedom, free trade, equal opportunities. Let the best product win.
I don't want to be forced to pay pezzo to the mafia just so I can do business.
Commercial software companies have the potential to be much better technology leaders than open source hippies. However, once things become main-stream commodoty items (such as operating system, web servers, programming environments, portals, databases, browsers..), it goes open source - just because of the shear nature of the thing: the market finds equilibrium like this. Forcefully restricting open source would upset that balance and unfairly disadvantage people and deny them opportunity.
And no, I'm not an RMS wannabe. Personally, I spend thousands on commercial software, for things that just wouldn't work as Free (as in Libre) Open Source because the apps I need are rather specialised by comparison (PCB CAD software, FPGA synthesis software (although I'm playing with confluence, a FLOSS project
A Debian GNU/Linux user that actually pays money for closed-source commercial software. And I don't believe I'm alone.