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Oracle Ready To (Continue) Linux Plunge

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the the-network-is-the-computer-or-database dept.

alphadogg writes "Rumors are swirling yet again that Oracle wants to get cozier with Linux and at least one financial analyst says customers can expect a tighter Linux-based appliance from the database and application vendor by the end of the month."

4 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Pros and Cons of Appliances by businessnerd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ok so before this discussion gets out of control with claims like "DUPE!" or "we arleady discussed this here" let me set a little focus to generate some more original discusstion.

    Clearly Oracle is definitely going in the direction of creating a linux based appliance. Let's ignore the Oracle Linux Distro. debate and focus more one Appliances themselves. Does the greater slashdot community like the idea of an appliance or dislike. I remember in the MySQL interview last week, MySQL's CEO mentioned he did not like the idea of appliances because the company should focus on what they do best and allow the partners to do the same, thus creating a more robust stack.

    Discuss...

    Alternate topic: A peanut is neither a pea nor a nut

    --
    "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
    1. Re:Pros and Cons of Appliances by eln · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Focusing on what you do best and letting the other people in the stack do what they do best works great for a one-product shop like MySQL, and in fact most other companies. Oracle, however, has been spending the past few years basically buying up the "best of breed" in each level of its application stack. Now that Oracle owns what it believes to be the best software at each level of the stack, they are working on the so-called "Oracle Fusion" product which will marry them all together. Integrating the OS layer, being the only layer they don't already own, is the next logical step in this process.

    2. Re:Pros and Cons of Appliances by atomic777 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Although I am no fan of Oracle, I must admit that this is a good idea, and one that is suprisingly overdue. Databases like Oracle and DB2 require a great depth of skills and experience to administer, and they are among the applications that stress operating system limits to the max, so integration between OS and DB is cruicial. A DBA or a DBA team has to bridge the wide gulf between sysadmin and business analyst. If you lessen the tedious task of tweaking and tuning a database to perform optimally on a given OS and hardware, you allow the DBA to focus on more important things, like deciding how to manage the data.

      While these appliances would never replace a skilled DBA for a performance-critical system, there are many small/medium-sized businesses with modest DB requirements that would benefit greatly from such a device, and put many a useless, lazy DBA out of work.

    3. Re:Pros and Cons of Appliances by gbjbaanb · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hell, with Oracle, just having someone else install the damn thing and all the patches, would be worth having an appliance.

      For things like MySQL, sure I can see why they would prefer to be a installed db - they do it very well for one thing so they do not need to make an appliance, but Oracle is almost never installed on a server along with other things, you buy a server to run Oracle on. Given that, its a simple step to have the OS get installed with the DB, and keep it updated regularly with patches that have already been tested by Oracle support people.

      A skilled DBA would be able to tweak the system anyway once installed - just because its an appliance doesn't mean it has to be fixed in stone, so I can't really see a downside for Oracle on this one.