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Oracle Ready To (Continue) Linux Plunge
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."
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
In certain sectors, we're beginning to really see competition arising from PostgreSQL and FreeBSD. This is especially true where reliability is a serious concern.
With a proper data backup strategy, several Opteron-based servers running FreeBSD and using PostgreSQL as the database can often be used to replace hundreds of Sun servers running Oracle. Often times we see vast performance increases, as PostgreSQL is a leaner product in many respects. If you don't need some of the more advanced features of Oracle, then PostgreSQL is often a perfect alternative.
The BSD licensing of both FreeBSD and PostgreSQL is often seen as a major win, as it allows for licensing costs to be reduced to nothing.
The only downside is that IT administrators can't just go and blame Oracle when things go wrong. But then again, PostgreSQL is far simpler to administer than Oracle, and the training time for DBAs is much less. The potential for problems is significantly decreased.
The article cites one of the reasons for the appliance would be for SMB's that want something that just works really well out of the box. That's fine and dandy for a lot of software products. However, I don't think Oracle falls into this category. Sometimes people seem to forget that Oracle doesn't really do much by itself. Users don't directly type in SQL queries. It needs an application to be used with. Say the business wrote the application in house. I can almost guarantee that application was written for windows. If the programmer is smart enough to know how to port it to Linux, they are probably smart enough to configure Oracle themselves. If they don't posess the technical skills to port it, the appliance is useless to them. At the same time, most ISV type applications usually aren't written for Linux either. It would defeat the whole purpose anyway because you just bought the Oracle appliance pre-configured, and now you have to make adjustments for this application and install the app. You buy appliances so you don't have to do that sort of thing
There are only two scenarios I could see this actually being practical. One is if there's a seperate dedicated DB server and an application server. However, the loads that occour in the SMB environment rarely warrant this. Most of the time the database and application run on the same server. The second would be to pass the appliance off to ISV's whom install and configure their software and resell it. That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense either because then they are just paying an Oracle tax for something they could do themselves.
Really, the only reason I could see them doing this is to stick it to Red Hat and make PHB's get a boner.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Why do the above? Simple. Small 1-6 ppl companies do not spend the money for Oracle or their apps. But if you offer it to them free, then an industry will sprout up around it. More importantly, once the company is on it, after 6 seats, they have to pay. I would also guess that these companies will want support. At some point, they will pay. Finally, this shuts out MS.
It's not a bad idea, but I think there's a few problems with it. If you were setting up a database for a small company with 1-6 seats would you pick heavyweight Oracle with it's higher costs to maintain, administer, etc, or would you pick PostgreSQL or MySQL which is cheaper to maintain, and doesn't have a mid-range expansion cost associated with it? I know I'd pick an open-source free DB way before I'd pick Oracle.
The reason is that the guys that have 1-6 seat needs are a long ways from actually needing Oracle. The expansion stage from dinky buisiness with very small DB needs to small-medium size is a lot more important (at least initially) than the medium-> large scale transition you'll need when you need the heavyweight stuff from Oracle (and some would even argue that PostgreSQL and MySQL are well used in large-scale businesses as well).
AccountKiller
We've been down this path before. Oracle tried to put together an appliance solution for running 8i, but it never got off the ground. At the time, it was rumored that they were looking at Linux, BSD, and Solaris for the underlying OS.
There was significant pushback from hardware vendors and users for this sort of integration. From users because it was felt that Oracle would abandon the idea of a database that ran on whatever platforms it could, reducing choice in IT departments. From hardware vendors because it meant that only one provider would benefit, and everyone else was afraid that they'd lose the ability to sell Oracle certified configurations.
And Oracle had a hard time finding an easy platform to deploy it on. At the time, Linux and BSD were not as capable for scaling as they are now. And working with Sun would make integrating Solaris expensive.
Now conditions have changed. Solaris is open and modular. BSD and Linux scale more easily, and on more mature N-way platforms. So it might be a good time to revisit the issue.
However, one has to question the value of an Oracle appliance. Because while large companies are happy to dedicate machines to single tasks, smaller firms are more likely to want to have machines serving multiple roles, which may not come easily to an Oracle appliance (or may cost more if it is required to use Oracle-stack implementations of whatever the need is for).
Yet larger companies have budgets to test, configure, and roll out their own database servers anyway. And Oracle is looking at the small to medium sized IT market.
So I don't know if this is going to get much traction. They're going to, at least, have to create a generic server appliance that maybe comes tuned for Oracle, yet can be used for anything.
That might be a winner.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON