Oracle Buys Sun

bruunb writes "Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt. 'We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle's earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle's non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,' said Oracle President Safra Catz."

Comments

What about MySQL?

[kaffiene]

Well well well. I can see this working well for Oracle - they use Java a great deal... and it should be good news for Sun's open source projects like Netbeans - which would, I think, be maintained under Oracle.

I guess it's a little sad to see Sun unable to continue by themselves, but the writing was on the wall and I think Oracle will keep all the Sun products working, but of course the big question is what does this mean for MySQL?

Re:What about MySQL?

[Kr0m]

Worse! What happens to development of Solaris!? Will it be downgraded to a minimal UNIX for an Oracle appliance?

Re:What about MySQL?

[ByOhTek]

Oracle already has Linux (a re-branded RHEL) for it's *NIX platform.

My guess is they'll relegate either their Linux, or Solaris to the back (either way, I wouldn't be surprised if Solaris went completely open source, no non-open-source Solaris).

Since Oracle likes primarily using "their own thing", my guess is they'll move to Solaris, and their Linux distro will take a bow, since it's based off of someone elses work, that they've not yet acquired.

Re:What about MySQL?

[rackserverdeals]

There was a time when Oracle was considering Netbeans, but Oracle joined the Eclipse Foundation.

I don't think JDeveloper is based on Eclipse though.

Might be interesting to see what happens. I think Netbeans will live on. Too many of sun's products rely on it.

What I'm more concerned with is the amount of contributions to PostgreSQL.

I still feel had they put more money/time into postgresql instead of buying MySQL, they wouldn't need to be bought.

Re:What about MySQL?

[srinivas_rc]

you mean harddisk(s)? But I got backup :)

Re:What about MySQL?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is "netbeans"? Who uses this java nonsense anyway?

Re:What about MySQL?

[rackserverdeals]

Eclipse is open-source.

So is Netbeans.

Re:What about MySQL?

[Alain Williams]

Probably the same thing it means for OpenOffice. Or Java.

I don't know what that is, though...

Remember: Larry hates Bill. Bill earns a lot of $$ from MS Office. This may result in more funding for OoO.

Re:What about MySQL?

[rackserverdeals]

Since Oracle likes primarily using "their own thing", my guess is they'll move to Solaris, and their Linux distro will take a bow, since it's based off of someone elses work, that they've not yet acquired.

Solaris used to be the primary development environment and when Oracle switched to Linux the developers seemed to miss DTrace.

In the past, Solaris was the best platform to deploy Oracle on. That may still be true today, even with all the support Oracle has put into Linux. Oracle has kept up with Solaris/Sparc but lagged releases for Solaris/x86. Hopefully that changes now.

As much as I like Linux, I still prefer Solaris, especially since Solaris 10.

Sun's hardware works best (faster doesn't mean better) with Solaris, so I can't see Oracle dropping Solaris. I agree that it wouldn't be surprising to see Oracle moving more towards Solaris.

Re:What about MySQL?

[TheRaven64]

I'd expect to see closer integration with their DB. ZFS has some very nice transactional facilities. Oracle on other platforms tends to use its own filesystem drivers, but on Solaris they could use a ZVOL for the underlying transactional model easily and benefit from the lower-level parts of ZFS while using their own code for the data layout. They already ship a Linux distribution for running the DB, but I wouldn't be surprised if they start shipping Solaris instead (they can then tie their code closely to the kernel without having to open source it).

The most interesting question is what will happen to the UltraSPARC line. On paper, Rock and the T2 look like they'd be a very good match for Oracle's workloads, but since Oracle's license prevents publishing benchmarks and I don't have the hardware and software to hand to test them, I can't tell how they do in the real world. While Sun hardware is relatively expensive, even a top spec T2 box is cheap compared to the software cost of a typical Oracle install and so I wouldn't be surprised if the T3 is tweaked even more heavily for Oracle workloads. Being able to sell a complete vertical solution, with their own CPU, OS, and DB system is probably quite appealing to Oracle.

Re:What about MySQL?

[MindKata]

"Since Oracle likes primarily using "their own thing""

I think this is one of the biggest potential down sides of this deal. Oracle seek to control their products through using "their own thing" ... This product lock in is part of their thinking and so part of their product lifespan planning process. Now that kind of thinking will be applied to everything Sun has given them.

Re:What about MySQL?

[BlackCreek]

I have many co-workers that use Eclipse everyday, but that never got hold of point of the joke in the name.

"Eclipse" is when the Sun is blocked/hidden/occulted by something else. It makes IBM's reasons for funding Eclipse dead obvious. Turn one of your competitor's product niche into a commodity.

Re:What about MySQL?

[Matt Perry]

What the fuck is "netbeans"?

They are the seeds of the internet. You plant some and sprinkle them with bits. Eventually they grow into a huge series of tubes. How do you think the internet was created? With lots and lots of netbeans.

Re:What about MySQL?

[A.K.A_Magnet]

http://www.google.com/search?q=Woosh

Re:What about MySQL?

[XDirtypunkX]

Just last month Sun confirmed Rock would be out this year. That's not exactly "scrapped".

Re:What about MySQL?

[extremescholar]

Microsoft SQL server

Re:What about MySQL?

[linhares]

Netbeans is much faster and elegant than JDev. Netbeans is much like another Eclipse, maybe better...

In the long run, FOSS converges to one winner, challenged by many (much smaller) creatures. Try to build a new browser or new *nix kernel and see how many people you project gets. Try to compete with Apache. Try to build a new OpenOffice (though one that had a major corp backing). I expect these IDE's to converge in one way or other to a single winner, and some small hang-on-tight communities fervor's for their champ remaining intact.

As for MySQL, the Oracle benefactors will say: do not worry, my dear people, we will keep it with true love, and gradually let it become deprecatingly obsolete.

Re:What about MySQL?

[SQLGuru]

Sun doesn't accept contributions to Netbeans itself citing that their development pace is too fast

Last time I checked, open source just means that the source is available. There's no requirement that they accept external contributions. If you want to contribute, fork it and go from there.

Re:What about MySQL?

[Twisted Mind]

Oracle joined the Eclipse foundation reluctantly and they have, as far as I know, not released an IDE based on Eclipse.

JDeveloper is more targeted for RAD development or development for software to run on Oracle software (such as JHeadstart) - although JDeveloper is certainly not limited to Oracle software. By the way, JDeveloper is based on a old version of JBuilder (I think it was JBuilder 2)

I, as many programmers, like Netbeans more then Eclipse, so changes are big Netbeans will get (more) support of Oracle.

Re:What about MySQL?

[ggeens]

I don't think JDeveloper is based on Eclipse though.

JDeveloper is based on an older version of JBuilder AFAIK.

Re:What about MySQL?

[LordKazan]

just because someone doesn't know the feature of one language of dubious quality means they don't know anything about software development?

that's a rather arrogant and stupid assertion. I work with several programmers who wouldn't know the first thing about netbeans (i have heard of them but don't know how to use them as I don't care for Java - i work in C++). These programmers all got their degrees before i was born (im 25) and used to write mainframe code, and have since been transitioned to C++. Sure they might not know some of the more modern concepts (software patterns and antipatterns) by name [they've used factory, singleton, etc without knowing the formal names]: but they wouldn't know about netbeans. Does this make them bad programmers? no they're rather good programmers most of the time, if annoying when you know more about modern computer science than them and have to ask their permission to make a necessary change since you're the "junior developer"

Re:What about MySQL?

[MadChicken]

Your sense of humor, OverflowException()

Re:What about MySQL?

[rackserverdeals]

I, as many programmers, like Netbeans more then Eclipse, so changes are big Netbeans will get (more) support of Oracle.

I hope so. I've been using Netbeans exclusively since 5.0 or 5.5. I find it to be better/cheaper than using eclipse. Everything I need comes with it and I don't need to buy any commercial plugins.

Re:What about MySQL?

[MaggieL]

I have many co-workers that use Eclipse everyday, but that never got hold of point of the joke in the name.

The name isn't the only joke about Eclipse.

Re:What about MySQL?

[vlm]

what does this mean for MySQL?

Probably the same thing it means for OpenOffice. Or Java.

No, because they have nothing to upsell above java ... Expect mysql to be stabilized, and have all syntax and maybe even docs oracle-ized or oracle-ified. Sort of like "free starter version of Oracle (minus as many useful features as we can get away with)". Expect new features to pretty much be sandbagged. The key is to slow down progress as much as possible without instigating a fork. So, the transition plan to go from the nuevo-mysql to oracle, would be dump the DB on nuevo-mysql and import it on oracle. No syntax changes, no modification of source, no column type issues, etc. Could be pretty cool.

On the other hand, if they really wanted a "starter demo" version of Oracle, they did not need to buy Sun to do it.

Re:What about MySQL?

[larry bagina]

IBM already had the database (DB2), the OS (AIX or zOS), and the processor (PPC, zArchitecture).

Re:What about MySQL?

[value_added]

In the long run, FOSS converges to one winner, challenged by many (much smaller) creatures. Try to build a new browser or new *nix kernel and see how many people you project gets. Try to compete with Apache. Try to build a new OpenOffice ...

So ... does that mean emacs or vi[m] won?

Re:What about MySQL?

[Unordained]

I expect these IDE's to converge in one way or other to a single winner, and some small hang-on-tight communities fervor's for their champ remaining intact.

Is this where we should put our vi/Emacs messages?

On a more serious note: the idea of a "single winner" had seemed true for a while of MySQL, but I wonder if this (on top of Oracle's previous acquisition of innoDB) might put a dent in that, and give the runner-ups (in terms of popularity) a chance to shine? PostgreSQL and Firebird (and others) have been waiting in MySQL's shadow for a while, quietly and effectively serving their particular markets. Was MySQL's position intrinsic, or the result of mob mentality -- and could a corporate purchase like this one shake that mentality, if that's the case? What other software would that apply to?

Re:What about MySQL?

[binarylarry]

No, it foretells the coming of the one true operating system / text editor:

VIMACS!

All hail!

Re:What about MySQL?

[Jon Peterson]

"On paper, Rock and the T2 look like they'd be a very good match for Oracle's workloads, but since Oracle's license prevents publishing benchmarks and I don't have the hardware and software to hand to test them, I can't tell how they do in the real world."

I do have the hardware and software to hand :-). We moved to T2 architecture (T5240s) at the beginning of the year for Oracle and for a bunch of other apps. In the case of Oracle it does what you expect - scales massively well for large numbers of fast queries (i.e. typical webapp situation), but of course if you have a single huge query, it's going to run on a single execution thread, slowly. A simple performance test showed Oracle scaling linearly until our test *client* ran out of steam - by then we were far about any expected load so didn't test further.

The key thing is licensing. We run Oracle 10g standard, and it works out very well. Oracle have insane licensing with fine distinctions about when a core counts as a CPU blah blah blah. Right now, with T2 we get 64 parallel execution threads for 1 Oracle CPU license, which works for me :-)

I'll be interested to see what Rock offers, but with the virtualization capabilities in Solaris, the T2 gives us a lot of room to be flexible and split stuff up. If you've been paying attention for the last 20 years and have designed your software on the principles of atomicity, asynchronicity, and statelessness, it does let you scale very very nicely.

Re:What about MySQL?

[rackserverdeals]

Oracle vs DB2, I think most people will choose Oracle unless they're a long time IBM mainframe shop and think their IBM salespeople walk on water.

Same goes for AIX vs Solaris.

This is probably why IBM was even considering buying Sun, to keep Oracle from buying it.

Now you have a great database, OS, server hardware, application servers, middleware, development tools, consulting services, all from a single vendor. It's another IBM, but with products that people prefer.

Re:What about MySQL?

[McKing]

btrfs is an attempt to recreate the features of ZFS. If Oracle releases ZFS under the GPL, then I would hope that it would be available as a first class filesystem under Linux as long as the Linux kernel maintainers don't get that "not invented here" syndrome. ZFS is a marvellous filesystem, but a lot of people don't understand it or how revolutionary it is because they haven't tried using it.

Re:What about MySQL?

[McKing]

I concur with this assessment. We recently moved from a $300,000 SunFire 6900 (a system the size of a standard full-size 42U rack) with 12 dual core CPU's and 48 GB of RAM that drew massive amounts of power and cooling, to a $30,000 T2 blade with 64GB of RAM that runs cool and sips power. Our DBA's were amazed at the improvement. We need to upgrade the front end systems now to keep up with the increase in performance of the backend! We were able to trade in the 6900, and the savings on *support* for the 6900 offset the purchase price of 2 blade chassis, 10 blades and a SAN!

For our workload, the massive parallel architecture of the T2 really suits Oracle. For any type of multithreaded or multiprocessed throughput-based app (web serving, front-end app servers, LDAP server, database server), the T1 and T2 design is perfect.

Re:What about MySQL?

[segedunum]

...but of course if you have a single huge query, it's going to run on a single execution thread, slowly.

You've described > 90% of the workload use cases that > 90% of organisations have and why businesses have been moving from SPARC to x86 for a vast number of jobs where they simply want to process single jobs faster, or increasingly large single jobs. As a result, you've also described why Niagara won't save SPARC.

Re:What about MySQL?

[ZachPruckowski]

In the long run, FOSS converges to one winner, challenged by many (much smaller) creatures. Try to build a new browser or new *nix kernel and see how many people you project gets. Try to compete with Apache.

KHTML/Webkit, BSD or Solaris, Lighttpd or Nginx. Doesn't matter if it's got the most users, it just matters if it's a viable deployment platform that's got (relatively) modern features. The only thing that matters to the end user is whether he can use BSD or Lighttpd or Webkit and have it do what he needs and will be maintained in the future.

Re:What about MySQL?

[metamatic]

In the long run, FOSS converges to one winner, challenged by many (much smaller) creatures.

According to economic theory, in most markets you get two market leaders--e.g. Coke and Pepsi, Bud and Miller, Ford and GM--and I don't see FOSS as any different.

Think about it: for almost every mature most-popular open source project, there's a second-place project that's superior.

Sendmail has postfix. MySQL has PostgreSQL. Apache has LigHTTPd. Emacs has vim. Python has Ruby. Git has bazaar. GNOME has KDE. Dia has Kivio. And so on.

(Have I poured enough gasoline yet?)

Re:What about MySQL?

[jbolden]

I was going to ask about KDE or Gnome.
MySQL or Postgres is still going strong.
Perl or Python ended up being both + Ruby
Windowmaker of FVWM ended up with neither

Re:What about MySQL?

[ArsonSmith]

OURsql = Oracle Upgrade Route sql

Re:What about MySQL?

[Burkin]

Open Source means you can see, modify and redistribute changes you make to a program. Nowhere does Sun disallow you from doing any of those things with Netbeans hence it is Open Source by the OSI definition. Sure, it's a pain in the ass that one has to maintain a disparate bunch of patches if you want to do any modifying of Netbeans because Sun won't accept them but that doesn't change the fact that it is open source.

Re:What about MySQL?

[Dun Malg]

"Eclipse" is when the Sun is blocked/hidden/occulted

I think you mean occluded. "occulted" is when you wave a dead chicken at it at midnight.

Re:What about MySQL?

[Forge]

No he is correct.

They are under no obligation to accept any contributions. What they cannot do is prevent other people from distributing their own modified versions.

Just as Linus rejected my Kernel mod claiming "this piece of $#!7 doesn't even compile and from my reading of the changes if it did the machine wouldn't boot."

So the grand parent is entirely correct. If you don't like the official version go fork it yourself.

Re:What about MySQL?

[frodo from middle ea]

No Microsoft's Shared Source prevents redistribution. Netbeans is licensed as CDDL and GPL2 (with classpath exception), which means you can fork and redistribute all you want.
Please reread your open source concepts and licenses. Just because a project is open source, doesn't mean the project's host have to accept any incoming changes from any random person.
In fact you can't commit to the Linux kernel tree too, until you have build some credibility with the core kernel team. You can submit patches, but don't hold your breath for them to be accepted any time soon, unless you have build some sort of repertoire.

Re:What about MySQL?

[rackserverdeals]

Some of Sun's PostgreSQL contributions can be found in that link.

More importantly, Sun provides PostgreSQL support on Solaris.

According to Larry Ellison, Solaris/SPARC is the leading platform for Oracle deployments.

Oracle has been lagging with Solaris/x86 support so it would have been a great opportunity for sun to do more with PostgreSQL on Solaris and increase their revenues by making a more affordable alternative to Oracle.

PostgreSQL/Solaris/ZFS/DTrace could really eat into Oracle's market if there was more effort put into it.

I think they should have done more with pgsql, and missed a big opportunity, but I wouldn't belittle their contributions.

Re:What about MySQL?

[amias]

actually thats how you get the perl support working

Re:What about MySQL?

[micromuncher]

JDeveloper was originally based on JBuilder, 5 I believe, but was completely re-written and diverged to be infinitely better...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JDeveloper

Re:What about MySQL?

[DragonWriter]

"Eclipse" is when the Sun is blocked/hidden/occulted

I think you mean occluded. "occulted" is when you wave a dead chicken at it at midnight.

No, "occulted" means exactly what the previous poster used it to mean. The root of "occult" mean to hide from view, and while the noun and adjective forms in general use have wandered off to refer to specific things because those things are usually hidden, the verb form remains much closer to the root. (See, e.g., here, or any other decent dictionary.)

Re:What about MySQL?

[theshowmecanuck]

I know I will be ridiculed for this, but the only really bad thing MS SQL Server has going for it is that it only runs on Windows boxes. As an RDBMS, it is pretty decent. It is not the best, it is not the worst. I find it interesting that it was one of the first RDBMSs that had almost full support of SQL-92 as far back as version 6.5 (mid/late 90s). In my work I have used a number database systems, a couple very extensively and the rest in at least non trivial applications (Oracle, MS SQL Server, Postgres, MySQL, and to a small degree DB2). From my experience I'd say that for anything up to very large databases (amount of data stored, number of tables, etc.), SQL Server works and performs quite well (v6.5 was only good up to medium large). It supports the SQL standards quite well, is one of the best documented database systems out there, and is quite robust. If they could find a way to run it on anything other than a 'Windows' machine, given its much lower pricing, I think it could probably cut into Oracle's and IBM's market share quite a bit.

Re:What about MySQL?

[TheCycoONE]

According to IBM, the name was meant to indicate the goal of eclipsing Microsoft Visual Studio, not anything to do with Sun Microsystems. http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Eclipse-Behind-the-Name/

Re:What about MySQL?

[rackserverdeals]

I usually don't comment on my moderation, but flamebait?

Someone obviously doesn't know much about the enterprise db space.

Oracle has about twice the market share of DB2. On IBM's mainframe and midrange servers, DB2 is the only available choice, which helps their market share, but otherwise Oracle is the more popular choice.

As for AIX vs Solaris... I thought it was common knowledge which was more popular. Doesn't take much googling to find out.

Re:What about MySQL?

[MagikSlinger]

Remember: Larry hates Bill.

I think this is how most people predict or evaluate Oracle's actions: "How would this f--- Bill Gates?"

"Um, Mr. Ellison? Bill Gates isn't running Microsoft anymore--"

"SHUT UP! I know he's still out there..." (stares out his window menacingly towards Redmond)

Re:What about MySQL?

[h4rm0ny]

MySQL or Postgres is still going strong.

Nah. PostgreSQL has won. We just haven't managed to persuade the MySQL users that they've lost yet. ;)

Re:What about MySQL?

[h4rm0ny]

Firebird can't compete with MySQL. PostgreSQL can. The risk for Oracle just might be that PostgreSQL can compete with Oracle. MySQL can be a good backend, but it can't meet some of the advanced needs that people have of Oracle. Therefore it's not really a competitor. It hoovers up all the small players that either don't care for or can't afford Oracle's almighty solutions. Even the table type that does lend MySQL some of the more advanced technology (InnoDB) is licenced from Oracle and their home-grown version (Falcon) has yet to show signs of being usable.

PostgreSQL can't provide all the features and power that Oracle can either. For the absolute most powerful setup you can ask, you want Oracle. But PostgreSQL can get a lot closer than MySQL. And migrating between PostgreSQL and Oracle is also quite easy a lot of the time. I think from Oracle's point of view, they'd rather MySQL be out there as the go-to database than PostgreSQL. This is all a bit conspiracy theory - I make no suggestion that Oracle actually are looking at things from this point of view and I don't think it would be a factor in purchasing SUN even if they did consider this angle. But I'm just considering the actual implications and it seems to me that while MySQL doesn't compete in the same market as Oracle and wouldn't for quite some time, its main rival PostgreSQL can and sometimes does.

Re:What about MySQL?

[tixxit]

I don't think we should make the assumption that Oracle would willingly kill of either MySQL or Solaris. IBM still fully supports Informix, despite it being a direct competitor for DB2 (and there is much more direct competition between DB2 & Informix, then MySQL and Oracle). Most importantly, as long as people are using MySQL, they'll support it. If they killed it off, there is 0 guarantee they will just jump ship to Oracle. Given we are talking about MySQL, people would most likely go over to Postgres or one of the MySQL forks instead, long before even considering a DB like Oracle. The same could be said about Linux vs. Solaris. There are still customers using both. Killing one off would be foolish, unless they could ensure most users use the other. Also, don't know about you, but if some company I was giving lots of money too just killed off our product, forcing us to spend even more, I may take a much longer look at the competitors.

Re:What about MySQL?

[metamatic]

Bertrand Model predicts that a duopoly pushes costs and profits down to marginal levels and is the ultimate result of any sufficiently competitive marketplace.

Disclaimer: I'm not an economist.

Re:What about MySQL?

[ungerware]

I don't know where the parent poster got the impression that Sun doesn't accept contributions to NetBeans. I'm a non-Sun contributor.

Re:What about MySQL?

[Dragonslicer]

No, it foretells the coming of the one true operating system / text editor:

VIMACS!

All hail!

You mean emacs will finally get a usable text editor?

Re:What about MySQL?

[ByTor-2112]

I don't think that's a very fair characterization. According to PJD, who ported it to FreeBSD::

http://www.bsdcan.org/2007/schedule/events/43.en.html

See page 15 of the presentation. He calls it "highly portable". Perhaps it's the linux internals which are not modular enough!

Re:What about MySQL?

[haruchai]

"Eclipse" is when the Sun is blocked/hidden/occulted

I think you mean occluded. "occulted" is when you wave a dead chicken at it at midnight.

That usage of "occult" is unusual but not incorrect. Both occult and occlude are derived from the same Latin root. See here: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/occult Entries 4 and 9-11 cover the usage regarding something being hidden

Re:What about MySQL?

[Hucko]

But, but he made the Scorpion King in the 2000s...?

Re:What about MySQL?

[jwhitener]

I'm not thinking of table A joined to table B is slower than querying table A then table B.

Think of a hundred tables, some of which are related (by keys) and some of which are not. As in, say 20 of them contain preferences about a user's web site layout, 20 contain general layout preference information, 20 contain the top content according to all user ratings, and 20 contain seasonal news/promo items.

All of which is used to create a website layout for a customer.

One approach would be to have one stored procedure, that does 5 queries, one after another, one per set of 20 tables, and merge the results into one set that is used to build the web view.

A better approach would be to have your application execute the 5 queries simultaneously by kicking off 5 mini programs, and return the results to the application for merging.

One big stored procedure handling it versus the application taking some of the load and having the option to run things in parallel.

You divide the work up among the database server and the app server, as well as gaining the ability to run things simultaneously via multiple threads.

This is where having ultrasparcs with 8 cores each and 8 threads per core really shines.

New Solaris bit-by-bit licensing terms

[imac.usr]

1s - free
0s - $10 per 0, minimum 100,000 0s

Re:New Solaris bit-by-bit licensing terms

[Nerdfest]

Ouch. Still cheaper than IBM though.

Re:New Solaris bit-by-bit licensing terms

[kimvette]

1s - free
0s - $10 per 0, minimum 100,000 0s

per processor core, multiplied by the number of megabytes of RAM installed in your system.

Oh, pardon me, this isn't a production system, but is a development workstation? Allow me to refer you to the above licensing fee schedule. Thank you for choosing Oracle!

Re:New Solaris bit-by-bit licensing terms

[MobyDisk]

Just give me the 1s, and tell me where they go. I'll fill in the 0s myself. :-)

Wow

[rackserverdeals]

This is a big surprise.

Wonder if Solaris will become their main development platform again.

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus, the Linux weenies are out in force today!

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Poorly run company with shitty products?

You can bet your money on it

Re:Wow

[slashdot_commentator]

My guess is that they'll put Solaris in maintenance mode until Linux becomes accepted as a high-availability, enterprise platform. At that point, there would be no reason to maintain Solaris; companies would move to Linux anyway.

Re:Wow

[slashdot_commentator]

I'd head out to Sun's website and grab Solaris 10 (10/2008) while its still free. I should get a recommended patch set while I'm at it as well...

Re:Wow

[wlt]

Actually. I think it might well go the other way. That Oracle decided to fork/clone Red Hat shows one thing - Oracle WANTS to have an OS.

Now they have one.

Re:Wow

[rackserverdeals]

Why would they use Solaris? Even Sun hardly seemed to use it that much ;o)

When you say stupid things, you might want to consider posting anonymously next time :)

Anyway....

When IBM was considering buying Sun, Forbes put out a video on Sun's legacy which some of you might find interesting.

It's sad to see Sun go down, but I'm optimistic about the merger with Oracle.

Re:Wow

[rackserverdeals]

Most of Sun's revenue comes from their Sparc hardware, even though sales have been declining.

They need Solaris for their Sparc servers and since the x86 and Sparc versions come from the same codebase, and the x86 server sales are increasing, it doesn't make sense to ditch Solaris.

One of the reasons Sun's became such a dominant player in the unix market (especially considering their relatively small size) is that, in addition to buying Sun's hardware on the merits of the hardware, a lot of people would buy sun hardware to be able to run Solaris. The same is not true for HPUX and AIX. While there are some fans of those OSs, they dwarf in comparison to Solaris.

Oracle wants sun's hardware business, including SPARC. That means Solaris isn't going anywhere.

Re:Wow

[bennomatic]

Oracle = Masterfully run company with shitty products

I'm not sure I agree. Love it or hate it, their core product--their database--is what runs any enterprise application where fast, reliable transactions are required. You can't run Visa or SalesForce on MySQL. It'd be great if you could, but they'd break under the load.

To which product(s) are you referring?

Site already slashdotted ...

[mbyte]

Seems oracle.com is down :(

Somehow i did hoped IBM would go and buy SUN, if this is really definitive .. how do IBM and Oracle play together ?

Re:Site already slashdotted ...

[jamesh]

Seems oracle.com is down :(

They've switch to Solaris already???

(ducks and runs for cover :)

Because of Oracle Database

[Chlorine Trifluoride]

Is this the end of MySQL?

Sad end

[saratchandra]

This doesn't bode well for some good hitherto lesser known products from Sun. Personally I'm a bit worried about Lustre.

Re:Sad end

[rackserverdeals]

Why would oracle ditch Lustre?

Lustre is a great file system for HPC clusters and is being more integrated with ZFS. I think something like 50% of the top supercomputers use Lustre.

It operates in a different space than Oracle's filesystems and doesn't directly compete with it, but is important for Sun's hardware business.

It wouldn't make sense to put Lustre on the back burner. Even if they did, it's open source.

Wow. Just Wow.

[wandazulu]

Maybe this isn't out the of realm of conceivability to others, but it was to me...Oracle is a software company (one that runs a lot on Sun hardware), and suddenly becoming a hardware company has got to be a daunting challenge, regardless of who you are or how smart you are.

The implications are staggering across the board. Maybe Oracle decides they don't want to the hardware, just Java and MySQL (...they got it, finally), but then all that Sun hardware and Solaris...? Or maybe they want to make Solaris/Sun hardware the best platform for Oracle products (already the case as far as I know), then what of support for all their other platforms.

Oracle likes to buy a lot of companies, but they've all been, more or less, niche players in specific markets to fill in the gaps of their own offerings. I can't imagine what "gap" buying Sun will fill, other than something will be certainly be filled.

Re:Wow. Just Wow.

[eldavojohn]

Oracle likes to buy a lot of companies, but they've all been, more or less, niche players in specific markets to fill in the gaps of their own offerings. I can't imagine what "gap" buying Sun will fill, other than something will be certainly be filled.

Application server? Java development environment? Control of the Java language? UI Technology? Hardware?

Everyone seems to be missing the big picture: Oracle's goal is to offer you a fully supported "stack" from database to application server to hardware and everything in between. All the development tools, technologies, languages, etc. So they can lock you in and offer you the full range of support, no handing you off to so and so because it's not a database problem anymore. Would you pay a premium for that? That's how you make money. And now, they have filled a lot of those gaps and have absorbed some great teams to make that dream a reality. Or so they believe. We'll see how this turns out.

Re:Wow. Just Wow.

[slashdot_commentator]

Its highly unlikely Oracle will maintain Sun's hardware aspect of the business. Sun already has put SPARC into legacy mode. Oracle will probably keep or sell off the hardware products that can sustain itself. It will probably maintain the legacy server stuff, to keep its high-end ticket customers who buy Sun for high-availability systems.

An accepted tactic to grow a customer base is to buyout another company's customer base. Its usually considered to be a cheaper route than investing in taking away a competitor's customer base. This is probably the reason Oracle went for Sun. Oracle has become more services/consultant oriented. It can't really break into IBM's territory, partly because of IBM's hardware components for "complete solutions" or enterprise market. This allows Oracle to grab all the customers IBM hasn't already taken away.

The bigger question is what Oracle plans for Sun's software products, like Solaris, MYSQL, and Java.

Re:Wow. Just Wow.

[morgan_greywolf]

You're right. I just don't get it. MySQL makes sense for Oracle. The hardware business makes no sense whatsoever.

Java really doesn't make much sense for Oracle, either. A lot of databases might get use Java front-ends, but so what? Oracle hasn't been in that business.

In the end, I think goes down like this: This is about two things: Red Hat and MySQL. Oracle's RHEL variant has been a a complete bust; Oracle customers have been sticking with Red Hat. Read Matt Assay's column over on C|Net if you don't understand the whol;e Red Hat/Oracle rivalry; he makes pretty good sense of it.

Oracle may have always wanted MySQL, but it's also been desperate for an OS to compete with Red Hat's, and it just got one in Solaris. It also has Sun's Linux offering (Java Desktop), but I don't think that's a real prize for Oracle, who has always been on the server end.

Re:Wow. Just Wow.

[Saint Stephen]

I think Oracle on AIX is pretty powerful, and popular.

Re:Wow. Just Wow.

[Angostura]

I agree that Oracle will kill off Sparc, but I would expect it to retain a Sun-branded hardware business, based on Intel. That will be a key part of the soup-to-nuts stack strategy, I would have thought.

Re:Wow. Just Wow.

[kestasjk]

I would have considered a Sun/Apple merger more likely

Re:Wow. Just Wow.

[slashdot_commentator]

No, what would Oracle gain from selling customized PCs? (I exaggerate, but that's what it is.) It costs money to invest in hardware development and marketing to get companies to buy the hardware package over a cheaper competitor. Companies didn't buy Sun equipment for its hardware. They bought it as a component of an enterprise high-availability system. Sun didn't sell a database product. They sold a platform product to run your database product on. Sun depended on OS lock in to move their hardware product. Sun couldn't survive on that model, and you expect Oracle to perpetuate it?

Re:Wow. Just Wow.

[TheRaven64]

A Sun/Apple merger would have made sense ten years ago, when Apple had a great desktop UNIX but with an ageing kernel and running on CPUs from a company that couldn't meet their demands. Sun had a decent server UNIX, with a nice kernel, but no real presence on the (corporate) desktop. OS X on a Solaris kernel, on SPARC would have been very nice, and could have scaled right down to the SPARC v8 systems designed for handheld systems up to the v9 cores designed for massive SMP servers. Steve Jobs still hasn't forgiven Sun for abandoning OpenStep though, so it was never very likely.

The real shame is that, in the mid '90s, Sun put together an incredible hardware and software stack for mobile devices. A few bits of it made it into Java, but most of it never went to market. If Sun had licensed the software and sold the hardware to ODMs then they would almost certainly not have been looking for a buyer now.

Re:Wow. Just Wow.

[pohl]

Java really doesn't make much sense for Oracle, either. A lot of databases might get use Java front-ends, but so what? Oracle hasn't been in that business.

You're joking, right? Oracle owns BEA now, and therefore both their Weblogic app server and the JRockit VM. Oracle has the TopLink implementation of the JPA-compliant ORM layer. They have the JDeveloper IDE. Those are just the things off the top of my head without searching.

Re:Wow. Just Wow.

[_Sprocket_]

It's IBM without... you know... the "IBM."

Well, crap.

[JerkBoB]

Is 8am too early to start drinking?

I am deeply disappointed by this turn of events.

IBM would have been a much better buyer, if the deal had to be done.

Oracle? Bleah!

Well, I'll bet the suits at IBM are kicking themselves hard, now that Oracle has control of Java.

Re:Well, crap.

[ozamosi]

Is 8am too early to start drinking?

No.

Re:Well, crap.

[Rik Sweeney]

Is 8am too early to start drinking?

That really depends upon your timezone and whether or not you've been to bed yet.

Re:Well, crap.

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Indeed, because it's 5pm somewhere.

I'm quite sure that IBM hates itself now

[egghat]

Oracle+Sun has the power to seriously harm IBM. IBMs big plus was the combination of good hardware + OS + DB + consultants.

Oracle + Sun can now deliver exactly the same.

bye egghat

Java is safe, mysql is safe...

[drinkypoo]

But SPARC is fucked. Not that it's any great loss, but anyone somehow still heavily invested in SPARC (not too good at reading the writing on the wall, huh?) should be making their transition yesterday. Probably a transition to IBM, which also has a competing database product which is quite credible.

On the flip side, perhaps Oracle will start leasing database-as-a-service boxes based around SPARC, which is about the only thing that could conceivably keep it alive. Why would you buy Sun if you didn't want their hardware? It would be a questionable move at best.

Re:Java is safe, mysql is safe...

[TheRaven64]

Why? From what I've seen, the recent UltraSPARCs (T2, and possibly the Rock too) have the best performance-per-watt when running parallel workloads with few floating point ops and lots of I/O. Oracle workloads are parallel, with few floating point ops and lots of I/O. Shipping Oracle appliances on T2 chips means that they aren't having to pay another company a share of their profits for their CPU, and continuing to sell them to other people helps them offset more of the R&D costs.

Oh, and Sun aren't the only company making SPARC chips. Some of the ones Sun has been selling for the past few years have been rebranded Fujitsu SPARC64s and there are a few companies selling SPARC32 (v8) systems for the embedded market, although they are less common than ARM and PowerPC.

Re:Arse.

[lambent]

more likely: will fork furiously and retain aggregate popularity while neither being quite compatible nor actually, ah, storing data reliably.

So, business as usual, then?

Wow

[EmagGeek]

Sun = Poorly run company with great products
Oracle = Masterfully run company with shitty products

I wonder how that DNA is going to come together...

This year is just beggining...

[Kr0m]

I wonder what will be the next big buyout? Novell seems the next likeliest candidate that would be up for grabs (By Microsoft?).

Re:This year is just beggining...

[shutdown -p now]

You mean, the Microsoft Linux jokes weren't jokes?..

Oracle was wanting its own OS

[hal2814]

Oracle was wanting its own OS. Not the worst way to get one and not the worst OS to have.

The internal announcement

[JerkBoB]

For anyone with morbid curiosity:

From: Jonathan I. Schwartz
To: allsun@sun.com
Subject: Today's Sun/Oracle Announcement
Date: Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:34:16 -0700 (07:34 EDT)

Today's Sun/Oracle Announcement

This is one of the toughest emails I've ever had to write.

It's also one of the most hopeful about Sun's future in the industry.

For 27 years, Sun has stood for courage, innovation, a willingness to blaze trails, to envision and engineer the future. No matter our ups and downs, we've remained committed to those ideals, and to the R&D that's allowed us to differentiate. We've committed to decade long pursuits, from the evolution of one of the world's most powerful datacenter operating systems, to one of the world's most advanced multi-core microelectronics. We've never walked away from the wholesale reinvention of business models, the redefinition of technology boundaries or the pursuit of new routes to market.

Because of the unparalleled talent at Sun, we've also fueled entire industries with our people and technologies, and fostered extraordinary companies and market successes. Our products and services have driven the discovery of new drugs, transformed social media, and created a better understanding of the world and marketplace around us. All, while we've undergone a near constant transformation in the face of a rapidly changing marketplace and global economy. We've never walked away from a challenge - or an opportunity.

So today we take another step forward in our journey, but along a different path - by announcing that this weekend, our board of directors and I approved the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by the Oracle Corporation for $9.50/share in cash. All members of the board present at the meeting to review the transaction voted for it with enthusiasm, and the transaction stands to utterly transform the marketplace - bringing together two companies with a long history of working together to create a newly unified vision of the future.

Oracle's interest in Sun is very clear - they aspire to help customers simplify the development, deployment and operation of high value business systems, from applications all the way to datacenters. By acquiring Sun, Oracle will be well positioned to help customers solve the most complex technology problems related to running a business.

To me, this proposed acquisition totally redefines the industry, resetting the competitive landscape by creating a company with great reach, expertise and innovation. A combined Oracle/Sun will be capable of cultivating one of the world's most vibrant and far reaching developer communities, accelerating the convergence of storage, networking and computing, and delivering one of the world's most powerful and complete portfolios of business and technical software.

I do not consider the announcement to be the end of the road, not by any stretch of the imagination. I believe this is the first step down a different path, one that takes us and our innovations to an even broader market, one that ensures the ubiquitous role we play in the world around us. The deal was announced today, and, after regulatory review and shareholder approval, will take some months to close - until that close occurs, however, we are a separate company, operating independently. No matter how long it takes, the world changed starting today.

But it's important to note it's not the acquisition that's changing the world - it's the people that fuel both companies. Having spent a considerable amount of time talking to Oracle, let me assure you they are single minded in their focus on the one asset that doesn't appear in our financial statements: our people. That's their highest priority - creating an inviting and compelling environment in which our brightest minds can continue to invent and deliver the future.

Thank you for everything you've done over the years, and for everything you will do in the future to carry the business forward. I'm incredibly proud of this company and what we've accomplished together.

Details will be forthcoming as we work together on the integration planning process.

Jonathan

Re:The internal announcement

[kaaposc]

Mr.Schwartz barely managed not saying at the end "I! Love! This! Company!! Yeah!"

Re:The internal announcement

[drkich]

From: Jonathan I. Schwartz
To: allsun@sun.com
Subject: Today's Sun/Oracle Announcement

So I can spam sun now?

Re:The internal announcement

[mzs]

The rumors are that the IBM deal fell through when IBM balked at the size of the golden parachutes that Sun expected. My guess of what happened is that Oracle was scared of IBM+Sun as their competitor. So they bought Sun so IBM wold not. Oracle does not really believe all of the stuff they stated (about financials) and others are inferring (like they were interested in MySQL, Java, sparc, etc). They simply saw that if they offered a better deal to the Sun execs they could prevent the creation of the most serious competitor they had ever faced. The Sun execs cared more for themselves than the long term good of Sun's products and employees.

Facinating combination

[downix]

What we have here on one hand is Oracle, a company that is incredibly well run, but with products that don't cover a complete spectrum, and Sun, a so-so run company with a wide range of product lines. This can go two ways, Suns platform quality goes down while Oracles management goes down with it, *or*, and this is the scenario I hope for, Oracle cleans out the dead wood in Sun management, and adopts the Sun technology in force. I've worked on Oracle machines, and Sun machines. I've also delt with both companies sales forces. If the synergy can be hammered out, this can really shake up the business world.

One suggestion tho, keep both names. Use Sun for the hardware, Oracle for the software.

Postgres is looking better than ever

[shis-ka-bob]

It remains a functional relational database. It has a BSD-style license with a very stable, nearly bug-free (see Coverity) core. It has modular design (you can write procedures in Java, C, C++, T/SQL, R, Python and others. You can get commercial support from a company (EnterpriseDB) that doesn't have a vested interest in moving you to a very expensive alternative.

Re:Postgres is looking better than ever

[rho]

Their string comparisons are case sensitive.

8.4 has citext. Or you can make an index with lower() on the appropriate columns.

IMO it's preferable for software to not assume that "Helped my uncle Jack off a horse." and "Helped my uncle jack off a horse." are the same thing.

Re:Postgres is looking better than ever

[Improv]

On the other hand, it makes selling tickets to the event easier.

Re:Postgres is looking better than ever

[Just Some Guy]

Imagine this - I need to grab the physical file for a db or table.... what do I look for?

Imagine this - you'd never, ever want to do that with a production database. What good is a copy of a table file with no context, no foreign key integrity, no transactional integrity, nothing? If you must back up a single table, pg_dump works.

Re:Postgres is looking better than ever

[ukyoCE]

I suspect if you're manually copying around the db's internal files you're doing it wrong. That's not the proper way to do replication, backups, or just about anything. Care to elaborate on what you were trying to do with the db's internal files?

Re:Postgres is looking better than ever

[rackserverdeals]

What good is a copy of a table file with no context, no foreign key integrity, no transactional integrity

Dude, you're talking to a MySQL user. They don't know what those things are.

Re:Postgres is looking better than ever

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG! TSIF! (the sky is falling)

You get to CHOOSE what collation you use - case sensitive or case insensitive...

see: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/case-sensitivity.html

Re:Postgres is looking better than ever

[Just Some Guy]

string comparison using MATCH(row) AGAINST ('string') is case insensitive.

I know you can match insensitively, but it boggles my mind that it's not the default. I expect "=" to mean "equals", not "closely approximates if you throw away enough information".

Re:Postgres is looking better than ever

[J Isaksson]

This also has the advantage that the hash of the entered password never travels over the wire (if your db server is on a different box)

Umm... and the actual correct password hash traveling over the wire as a result is better how?

Re:Postgres is looking better than ever

[Dragonslicer]

Can anyone give an example of another common modern environment where "=" (or "==" as appropriate) is case insensitive?

The SQL standard. I'm not saying it's good, but it is the standard.

New hardware standard.

[geekmux]

I wonder how long it will take Oracle to pretty much give the middle finger to HP and Dell hardware partnerships in favor of the soon-to-be-released OracleFire "product-in-the-box" line...

Re:New hardware standard.

[philj]

I wonder how long it will take Oracle to pretty much give the middle finger to HP and Dell hardware partnerships in favor of the soon-to-be-released OracleFire "product-in-the-box" line...

It already exists... In partnership with HP :)

Oracle Exadata

I imagine that'll soon go the way of the dodo, and get replaced with some Sun kit.

Java 8 Preview

[characterZer0]

Java 8 will replace String with String2, which will treat empty string and null the same.

Re:Java 8 Preview

[CynicTheHedgehog]

Seriously, anyone who has taken a close look at what Oracle has done to Java with JDeveloper and Oracle AS knows that this will not be good for Java. Oracle is famous for not implementing standard API calls and instead providing proprietary methods and super classes to implement basic functionality (JDBC BLOBs, web services, etc.) Vendor lock-in is one thing, but their ideas and designs are just ugly and unwieldy.

They had started to play nice with EJB3 and TopLink, but now they have absolutely no reason to keep doing so. They now have much more weight in the JCP process (if the JCP even continues to exist) and they can now push out better ideas from competitors. I'm very apprehensive about the future of Java.

Re:Java 8 Preview

[ionix5891]

sounds like PHP

Re:Java 8 Preview

[CynicTheHedgehog]

I think completely open source. But that doesn't matter. Supposing it forks, you would in essence end up with 3 different dialects of Java: Oracle, IBM, and RedHat (FOSS) which may or may not remain binary compatible. Having Sun as an external arbiter with no direct commercial interest in the success of one stack versus another meant that you had agreement among the major interests and a unified direction. (Sun does/did have an app server stack, but it's always been more of a reference implementation.)

EJB3 was almost a carbon-copy of Hibernate, which was the most advanced, feature-rich ORM implementation at the time. Had Oracle been in charge at the time, the scales might have tipped in favor of TopLink, which would have left the OSS community playing catch up trying to implement a less elegant solution geared toward one vendor's RDBS. Granted, TopLink has essentially been open-sourced (it is the EJB3 implementation used by Glassfish), but that may not have happened either if Oracle had control over the reference app server stack.

Oracle doesn't have the commitment to open standards and open source that Sun does. I don't trust them to continue to open up new technologies and allow much community participation. I expect closed, buggy extensions that will ultimately be imitated by 1001 open source knock-offs , leading to fragmentation like we've never seen before.

The market is converging on stack-oriented development, so perhaps this is inevitable. It seems now that instead of simply knowing a language you have to know a particular IDE, DB, and app server as well. This is just another step in that direction.

And one last point. I've always found the Sun Java forums to be helpful, but I've never had much luck with Oracle forums. I think this is bad news for the community all around.

I doubt it

[shis-ka-bob]

MySQL is in a very different niche than Oracle. When is the last time you saw Oracle used as the back end for a Wiki or a large company use MySQL for an enterprise ERP system? It may happen that somebody uses a product outside of its niche, but like a lungfish on land, it just isn't as effective as something that has evolved to better fill that role.

Re:I doubt it

[wlt]

MySQL is in a very different niche than Oracle.

I'd think MySQL is one of the reasons Oracle bought Sun. Whatever its failings, MySQL is the "default" choice for most new (small) deployments (I mean, to the extent there's the LAMP acronym for it), the ones that are too small for Oracle to care about.

Now that Oracle has it, they're in a position to "upsell" them once they get far enough. They now control both the high end AND the low end ("... the horizontal and the vertical..."). I'd expect an upper limit to the effort put into scaling MySQL up ("we already have a high-end DB, why waste the effort?"), but I don't see them abandoning it.

Re:I doubt it

[Capitalisten]

Depends on the definition of "large".
One of the leading Danish Banks, Jyske Bank (4.145 employees, 122 offices), recently announced that they would be switching their online banking system to MySQL - the announcement (in Danish) is here:

http://dk.sun.com/sunnews/press/2009/090226.jsp

I fear that we'll see a standstill in MySQL development until one of the recent forks gain enough traction for it to be accepted across Linux distributions and see an uptake in development efforts from third parties.

Oracle developing MySQL? How many open source projects does Oracle maintain today (except from a ripped off OS)? How many small and medium sized customers does Oracle have today? Exactly...

Re:I doubt it

[TheRaven64]

And, because they now own all of the MySQL code (remember, MySQL requires copyright assignment for contributors) they can now incorporate bits of it into Oracle. This may not sound like something you'd want to do, but remember that a lot of small applications rely on oddities in MySQL's support for SQL, including various bugs and non-conforming behaviours. If Oracle take the front-end code and run it on an Oracle back-end then they can sell appliances that can be used as drop-in replacements for MySQL and can also run important databases. Or, if they are using Solaris Zones then they can sell an appliance that has both installed in separate zones, and if you want to enable Oracle then you just start the second zone and send them some money.

Re:I doubt it

[dns_server]

They contribute to a few projects but not a lot, mainly kernel work take a look at http://oss.oracle.com/

Good-bye MySQL

[PhotoGuy]

Thankfully, I have recently switched myself (and my clients) over to Postgresql.

It was a sad day when Oracle got the rights to the InnoDB engine, but at least MySQL itself was in the hands of Sun.

With Oracle now owning all the rights to what is probably the biggest free competitor, I think the open source world shouldn't put much stock or investment into MySQL.

I've been quite impressed with the performance and straight-forwardness of PostGres, and will continue to happily use it. I was alawys keeping MySQL in the back of my mind, to try out now and then, but with this announcement, I doubt it'll be worthwhile.

Is there any anti-trust factors to this? Oracle, being a dominant database player, and buying up the biggest open source database?

Aside from that, I find this all very sad. Sun was one of the Unix innvators from the earliest days. Even when they grow large, they still seemed like a "cool company." Healey used to personally answer emails I would send him. Oracle seems to be the antithesis of this; major, corporate, gouging, monster... One can only hope that some of Sun's culture and products will survive.

Re:Good-bye MySQL

[LaminatorX]

• ACID across the board rather than as an option.
• Extensibility with at least half-a-dozen languages

• EXCEPT/INTERSECT in UNION,

• (Ironically)Broad compatability with Oracle pl/SQL

...just to name a few.

MySQL offers some speed benefits, but mostly when you're using MyISAM, which costs you ACID. For some applications that may be a desirable trade off, but I'm inclined to use BerkelyDB or SQLite for those, and use PostgreSQL when heavier lifting is called for. Most of MySQL's speed advantages over PostgreSQL narrow when MySQL runs with InnoDB rather than MyISAM and Postgres is given more memory than its rather conservative (for up to date hardware) default settings.

Bad news for MySQL

[jonnyj]

MySQL is worth far more to Oracle than to any other company. To anyone else, MySQL is simply worth the present value of its future revenue stream but, to Oracle, it's also worth the impact that it has on its own database revenue streams.

The anti-MySQL ranters who keep posting on /. miss the point that for many, if not most, commercial projects, MySQL is good enough and has a very low total ownership cost. Oracle knows that too, and the mere existence of MySQL puts an effective price cap on Oracle for low-end projects. It's not the number of users who actually switch to MySQL that bothers Oracle; it's the number who threaten to and get a discount as a result.

Look out for some significant changes to MySQL licensing and pricing. It's my guess that databases just got a whole load more expensive.

Re:Bad news for MySQL

[Synn]

Look out for some significant changes to MySQL licensing and pricing. It's my guess that databases just got a whole load more expensive.

Eh, no. MySQL is GPL. Oracle can't make it more expensive and if they try to kill it, someone will just fork it and take the project away from them.

That happened with X11 a couple years ago and today Xorg is the standard X windows server for Linux.

Re:Bad news for MySQL

[Micah]

So what's to stop those users from using PostgreSQL instead?

Re:Bad news for MySQL

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

To name a few who have already worked on various patches/forks of mysql...

Percona
Google
Mariadb

Niagara should have a future

[shis-ka-bob]

We are entering an era where energy conservation is going to be critical. Niagara2 can provide 32 threads for 72 Watts. This is a great CPU for a hypothetical Oracle on-site enterprise database appliance. Add a hot-failover-to-cloud, and you can have a database that doesn't even stop for upgrades or floods.

Re:Niagara should have a future

[egghat]

CPUs are a "scale" business. Bigger is better, cause it's extremly expensive too design and produce a CPU. That is why most of the non i86-architectures have vanished.

I might second you statement that Niagara *should* survive, but nevertheless I doubt it.

bye egghat.

Re:Niagara should have a future

[downix]

Untrue. Niagara T2 embeds inside of it's CPU most of the parts you would find on the motherboard, such as the RAM controller, northbridge, southbridge, even the Gig-E controller. There is less than 10% of a normal PC in the picture with the single, solitary, only PCI Express port.

Re:Niagara should have a future

[McKing]

It's interesting that you speak about that of which you have no idea. For the CoolThreads servers (T1 and T2), Sun redesigned every part of the server to be more energy efficient, from the fans to the power supplies. That then carried over to more efficient x86-based Sun servers as well. I know from experience that in our data center, a fully loaded Dell web server generates *far* more heat than a fully loaded T2 Oracle server. I've stood behind a rack of Dells and then a rack of Sun gear and the Dells are *insanely* hot.

You might be able to haggle on the hashes.

[wild_berry]

Per-bit, with the 1's stored being stored free, and the 0's being stored at $10.00 each, payable in bunches of 100,000.

InnoDB and MySQL together

[Micah]

At last, InnoDB and MySQL owned by the same company. I guess that's a good thing.

Sparc into legacy mode?

[jotaeleemeese]

Didn't get that impression last time I attended one of their seminars a few weeks ago.

The multicore stuff Sun is doing is miles ahead og anything anybody else is doing,. I hope Oracle do not axe that.

You're playing an incomplete game!

[jonaskoelker]

On paper, Rock

Why won't anyone play with scissors? :(

Re:You're playing an incomplete game!

[linhares]

sorry but this is the first real news on slashdot in ages. Nobody is gonna make jokes around here today.

Re:You're playing an incomplete game!

[toriver]

Because the scissors were confiscated by airport security.

But little did they know the paper had edges as sharp as a razor blade...

Re:SPARC going out...?

[rackserverdeals]

I think the interesting question is, does Oracle care about SPARC?

The majority of Sun's $13billion in revenues comes from hardware.

The majority of their hardware comes from Sparc.

Why would you buy a company for billions of dollars and ditch it's most popular product?

Re:I just hope...

[sfraggle]

Hey! Did that guy just use "synergies" in a non-ironic fashion? Get him!

Should I feed the troll?

[egghat]

Source IDC 2008:

market share:

"Unix, mid-to-high-end servers ($17.2 billion in 2008)

IBM 37.2 pct
Sun 28.1 pct
HP 26.5 pct

"

Don't give a flying fig about Suns servers?

IIRC Solaris still has the highest market share among proprietary Unixes. And AIX ist only third after HP-UX.

And if you think about Oracle as a database company you've kind of missed the last 8 years or so. They've bought a lot of stuff and are number two behind SAP.

"IBM provides Java and Java products. "

Well I guess Sun does that too.

Regarding virtualization: XVM Server

Should be enough to keep the troll busy ;-)

Bye egghat

Re:Should I feed the troll?

[TheRaven64]

Sun has a massive presence in the virtualisation market:

• xVM, which you mention, is Xen with a Solaris dom0. A lot of people associate Xen with Linux, but it can run quite happily with Solaris or NetBSD domain 0 guests providing hardware access and no Linux anywhere. The xVM configuration uses Solaris for hardware support and for running the management system.
• The SPARC systems all support logical domains, allowing you to partition the system into typically around 64 virtual machines in hardware. You can run anything that supports the native hardware on these, but you get better performance with virtualization-aware guests. I believe Linux falls into this category - OpenBSD and Solaris definitely do, meaning that you can run an isolated OpenBSD firewall on the same machine you run your Solaris server.
• VirtualBox is now an impressive desktop virtualisation program. Most interestingly, it now supports an interchangeable format for VM images, meaning that in future you will be able to prepare virtual appliances in VirtualBox and then deploy them on xVM. It also supports 3D acceleration for Windows and Linux guests.

IBM may have been doing virtualization for longer than anyone else, but they certainly aren't the only ones with an impressive lineup in that area anymore. Their POWER systems have the same kind of hardware partitioning that SPARC supports, but they still seem to regard it as an enterprise feature.

catz

[psyklopz]

Oracle President Safra Catz was also heard to remark...

"all your database are belong to us"

Yes, very stupid move on IBM's part

[cpu_fusion]

Oracle suddenly has a great operating system, great server hardware, a popular database, and the de facto language of server-side business logic (other than COBOL.)

And IBM has built so much of its business on Java.

IBM should have just opened the piggy bank and it would have saved itself the world of hurt it now has in store.

Arrogance is blinding you

[shis-ka-bob]

PostgreSQL has seen major improvements. Look at the Coverity open source scans. Coverity identified 90 (potential) coding errors. Each was investigated. There were 57 code fixes, on for every code error that was confirmed by a coder. Not exactly a rotting community. Look at the previously reported scaling on FreeBSD 7.0. This is nearly perfect scaling. That doesn't happen by itself.

Re:Sun's OSS Projects

[gazdean]

http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/linux-tech-leadership-contributions.html

Re:SPARC going out...?

[Tanktalus]

Why would you buy a company for billions of dollars and ditch it's most popular product?

Simple. You bought it for the profitable parts and/or the parts you think you can make profitable. Hardware margins are so low that even giants like IBM have been transitioning away from them, leaving it all to Intel, AMD, and others who are completely focused on that market. Oracle may abandon it, may try spinning it off and selling that unit, or may try making a go of it. Given Sun's decreased attention on SPARC prior to this, I'd have to guess that Oracle will continue the trend and try to get rid of it. Meanwhile, Oracle will have to concentrate on the real value adds for them, which is probably a) customer lists and b) software, probably in that order.

Scared after seeing what happened to Berkeley DB

[HardWoodWorker]

I love BDB. Oracle bought them and now they've hampered open source involvement. You can't see their source repositories. All you can do is get a zip of their latest release. I don't think any non-Oracle employee contributes to BDB. Read-only open source is barely open-source. I don't want the same to happen to Java, Glassfish, and Netbeans.

Good move...for Oracle

[ErichTheRed]

I remember seeing Oracle rebranding high-end server hardware recently, and tweaking Oracle to run ultra-fast on that particular configuration. Now they have a hardware platform (Sun's x86 and Sparc lines), a software infrastructure (Java) and a marketing lock (Sun hardware and Oracle database purchases seem to go hand in hand, even now.)

So it's a good move for them. We'll see how well it works out for everyone else. Oracle hasn't been known for developing products that don't require an army of Oracle consultants to get working. If they use the Sun acquisition to build their "database in a box" product, then customers face lock-in on the hardware and software fronts, just like back in the mainframe/midrange days.

It might be the cynic in me talking, but Oracle has been one of the major causes of large-scale IT failures you read about in the industry press. It's helped along by bad requirements and idiotic lowest-bidder consulting firms, but Oracle is sometimes forced to pay large settlements for running a project over budget. That's just a natural side effect of designing products that are so complex that you have no choice but to buy support. Also, you have to wonder what Oracle's going to do with MySQL now...

Oracle consumed J.D. Edwards, PeopleSoft and BEA. Let's see how well they digest this one!

Re:anybody but Oracle....

[ElvenSmith]

hmmm...the "cultures" are so different at Oracle and Sun...will Oracle let stand Sun's culture that is quite unique, I would say...I doubt it...

The day MySQL died

[MBCook]

A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
How queries could run for a while.
Adding more memory would help
But performance would still make us yelp,
Still the price was cheap and always made us smile.

But April's news made us shiver
Oracle would our DB deliver
DBAs on the doorstep;
Large checks we'll have to schlep.

I know that our CEO cried,
When the new price he spied.
Our low cost hope now are fried.
The day MySQL died.

(continue on your own)

That 7.4 billion bought a sh*tload of useful I.P.

[cpu_fusion]

This was an intellectual property firesale. IBM = idiots. Congratulations to anyone who realized Sun stock was ridiculously undervalued; you deserve the profit you made by buying low.

This doesn't sound like a good move.

[jcr]

I think Oracle's underestimated the cost of integration between companies with such dissimilar cultures. Not to mention, by jumping into the hardware business, they've given all of the other hardware makers a very strong reason to steer their customers away from Oracle.

-jcr

Re:SPARC going out...?

[rackserverdeals]

Nonesense.

Their SPARC servers are their highest margin servers and account for most of their revenue. UltraSPARC server sales declined but the CoolThreads servers and x86 servers increased, but nowhere near the level of their traditional SPARC based revenues.

Buying Sun, and killing SPARC would be a stupid idea. They could have bought other companies cheaper.

I agree

[shis-ka-bob]

I think this is exactly right. Now every time IT installs a MySQL database, the CEO will see 'Oracle'. They will have warm fuzzy feelings because they know Oracle is serious software(TM). They will also see that Oracle doesn't have to be expensive. They will then have the same sort of up sell opportunity that Microsoft had with Access to SQL Server, except of course that MySQL is not as f***ed up as Access. For MS, the upsell occurred as soon as you moved from personal to departmental. With Oracle, the line of division will be (roughly) division and enterprise.

Unbreakable

[AliasMarlowe]

Oracle already has Linux (a re-branded RHEL) for it's *NIX platform.

But perhaps they'd prefer something unbreakable. Like Solaris.

Re:Unbreakable

[rackserverdeals]

I'm hoping that's a joke and not serious...

Why would that be a joke? For years Oracle/Solaris/SPARC was one of the preferred stacks for deploying a mission critical OLTP system in the enterprise as well as many start-ups.

When Oracle embraced linux and created their linux distro, they called it "unbreakable linux", because they made enhancements to linux to make it more stable. Implying that it was breakable before.

You don't have "Unbreakable Solaris" because that would be like having a banana-flavored banana.

Re:Unbreakable

[Anonymous Coward]

I must admit that I never managed to break Solaris. Come to think of it, I'm not really sure I managed to get it to install...

Re:.10 a share, argh!

[slashdot_commentator]

Because IBM kept low-balling the buyout price. Its was under $9.50 before IBM bailed out.

IBM a better mother ship for SUN. WTH?

[upuv]

I'm sorry ( rant mode )

IBM is possibly one of the most over blown Enterprise companies on the planet. IBM buying SUN would have been a huge dis-service to IT and the evolution of the industry.

Note that IBM has become the new CA. Buy and pillage the corp resources. If it looks shiny and possibly something that will gen new money then brand it Tivoli. If we can milk the old name till it dies a death of agony brought on by starvation and dehydration we will. The best known near dead corpse we know as Rational.

I'm sorry but IBM is possibly a worse choice for buying SUN than Microsoft.

Don't get me wrong Oracle is no poster child of virtue out there. Oracle is definitely going to milk this all ribs and bones cow that is SUN microsystems. But at least the landscape at the end of the pillage will most likely still have a free Java and a free RDBMS. There is zero chance IBM would have left a potential cash flow alone like those two.

OK Here's one to put in the Calender. Google buys Microsoft. Feb 2012. I put one Aussie penny on it. :) :)

But thank the corp gods that IBM did not buy Microsoft, Err I mean Sun. If you have dealt with IBM GSA you are then invited to tell me I'm wrong on this :)

It was predicted here a few days ago

[Optic7]

What I'm surprised about is that no one (especially the Slashdot editor) has yet linked the story from a few days ago predicting this.

Dear Slashdot

[Godji]

I have two questions for you:

1) What happens to ZFS now? Is it more or less likely now to see it come to Linux (the kernel) one day?
2) In general, is this a better outcome than IBM buying Sun?

deja vue, DEC

[omb]

This has been almost 10 years overdue, when Scott McNealy started behaving like Ken Olsen, c. 1978-80, SUN was doomed, and makes the "No Computer Company makes two full generations" law up there with Moore's and Bell's laws.

The get to have a death wish, and wont adapt to market conditions:

Use VMS/Bliss not Unix and C, Unix is Snake Oil

s/VMS/Solaris/g

It is soo sad, and in some ways the better the product they the worse the delusional thinking is. If HP/Intel had got the Itanium right this would have been over 10 years ago.

The other sad thing is how the aging Solaris sysadmins still insist that Lintel is less reliable than SPARC+Solaris. As one who worked extensively with the Solaris core kernel let me tell you the Linux code is far better than its Solaris counterpart. As some Intel hardware vendors, HP, Dell & IBM were forced to 86_64 when the Itanic sunk, one got similar high quality engineering for servers that SUN did, hot-swap, ECC ram carefully designed boards with diagnostic capability, good ground plane, equalised clock distribution, quality thermal design ... as SUN.

It is so easy to get blind sided by prejudice, I remember the first DEC ethernet controller, for the Unibus, with AMD2900 bit-slice and loadable u-code, wonderfull engineering, but it drew 7A of 5V, and you often needed to install an additional backplane and PSU to cope with the heat and +5V drain. Madness!

Re:deja vue, DEC

[chrysrobyn]

If HP/Intel had got the Itanium right this would have been over 10 years ago.

What in the world does this mean? Are you suggesting that EPIC could have gone any other way than non-general purpose computing? Or that Intel should have thrown billions of dollars at compilers to advance the state of the art the decade it needs to handle EPIC in a general purpose environment? Or that Itanium should have taken a route other than EPIC -- if so, then how would that differ from x86-64, Core2 style?

Itanium is an incredible processor for extremely predictable workloads. Numerical computation, rendering and the like where assembly can be used to tune the instruction ordering, or even very smart compilers that are tuned for specific flows really make EPIC shine something special. General purpose computing, with branch mispredicts, massive delays for different levels of memory hierarchy (L1, L2, main memory, spinning storage) and even context switching throws most EPIC for enough of a loop that a far simpler out of order processor with a few threads makes a lot more sense. Core2 is so simple that they're tossing more than half the die to the L2, and they might as well, because the IO count means they have to have the bigger die anyway. As much as I hate Chipzilla, they really hit one out of the park with the Core2 generation. Multicore Pentium-M was a brilliant idea -- IBM should have done the same thing with the PowerPC 750, but alas it was not to be.

I think the only thing HP/Intel could have done differently with Itanic was to not bet the farm on it. Alpha, MIPS and PA/RISC were far more promising than anybody allowed because as everybody at the time knew, Itanium was on the way.

Oracle as backoffice coupled to OS/X front office?

[shis-ka-bob]

It seems that Oracle and Apple can make a reasonable stab at offering an integrated high-end service for folks with money. This market has already moved to iPhones and Power Books (look at many presentations at places like Davos, Power Books are everywhere). If you can get iMacs ( or a Mac Mini for the interns), you can take over the office. They could offer a MobileMe-like service, only one that is tied to a private network rather than a web service where you are always worried about the security of somebody else's network. Run all network traffic over IPSec, drop to https as needed on the firewall. Offer Solaris with Oracle servers with tight security. You might have a product worthy of law offices and Wall Street.

Since the back office is not mobile and caters to groupware, the cloud service could be called ImmobileUs, but I think marketing may object.

Re:What is this nonsense?

[guacamole]

Education has been switching to Linux/Windows/Macs away from Solaris and SPARC for about a decade now, at least definitely on the desktops, both research and instructional. Many IT servers and most high performance computing servers had been switching to x86 based solutions (usually Linux) too. When Sun introduced the dreadful Ultra 5/Ultra 10 family it was a clear writing on the wall, that the party is over, that the SPARC workstations won't last for long in the places they they to be common place in the 90s. There are still a few system administrators in the academia who insist on inflicting the Sun Rays upon their users but they are the minority. Yes Sun flip-flopped on Solaris x86 and waited too long with the introduction of x86 hardware. At the same time all the academic software vendors (Matlab, Mathematica, etc), dropped the support of Solaris on x86 because even before Sun's flip-flop this platform saw pretty weak sales of their products. When Sun changed course, it was too late. Most academic/research/technical users started the process of switching to Linux or other non-sun solutions.

Likewise, defense contractors, such as the aerospace companies, had been moving their engineering desktops from Sun and other proprietary workstation vendors to Linux for a long time now. I suspect the situation is similar in the oil industry.

You're playing a dangerous game!

[shis-ka-bob]

If you run with this one, somebody is going to loose an eye.

Re: Solaris

[rackserverdeals]

I'm listening to the conference call now.

One of the first thing Larry Ellison said was two of the main reasons they were buying sun were for Solaris and Java.

Solaris/Sparc is the largest base where Oracle is deployed. Linux is number 2. He also said "Solaris is the best unix techonology available in the market."

Solaris isn't going anywhere.

sparc and oracle

[Gary W. Longsine]

Sun's multicore sparc work is basically custom designed to run giant database servers, and giant web servers with giant database back ends. Doing so at lower power draw than the competition has the potential to be a market winner. That alone will not be sufficient, however.

Re:Split the company

[swordgeek]

Mostly I agree with you. However...

Workstations are necessary as a platform for developers/admins. Even as a loss-leader, they support the health of server sales. Be that as it may, Sun workstations are all PCs now anyways. No more SPARC on the desktop.

The super high-end servers are a big profit area, even at a low volume. The same computer power sells for a MUCH higher margin, even after the higher costs are factored in. Also, they (again!) support the low-mid range sales. If you have a monster Sun system in your data centre, the most obvious gear to support it is more Sun gear.

Solaris is open. If you don't like the CDDL license, too bad for you. The fact that it doesn't meet the requirements of an aging anti-commerce hippie doesn't make it less open. Hearing "change the license" is automatically a flag that some Linux fanboy is determined to paint the world in HIS colour, and EVERYONE ELSE must comply.

free as in beer matters too

[eliot1785]

While this is obviously a problem for FOSS, as somebody who works for startup companies, I am also very concerned about potential changes to the pricing structure. Startup companies and SMB's use MySQL instead of Oracle because they can't afford to pay for a database on top of all of their other costs. Cheap/free database software is part of what makes entrepreneurship possible for so many people.

If Oracle slowly kills MySQL through neglect, it could have ramifications for the broader economy, unless another database software (e.g. PostgreSQL) can fill the void.

Fortunately, it's all based on the SQL standard, but there are still differences between RDBMS's that developers will need to learn to switch.

And yes, why is there no antitrust attention when Oracle tries to buy the owner of MySQL?

Re: Solaris

[BitterOak]

He also said "Solaris is the best unix techonology available in the market."

Solaris isn't going anywhere.

So why is there still no Oracle 11g for Solaris/x86, when its already been released for most of the other major platforms, including Windows, Linux, AIX, HP-UX. It has been released for Solaris/Sparc, but as of yet, no 11g for Solaris/x86.

Oracle + Sun MUCH better than IBM + Sun

[blind biker]

IBM would have killed all of Sun's hardware (including their backup and storage gear, which is often forgotten and yet it's very large and important). No more SPARC and their cool-running, many-core (and open-source) Niagara platform.

IBM would have killed Solaris (they have their own Unix, AIX). Luckily, Solaris is open-source, so perhaps someone would have picked up the torch.

IBM would have killed Star/OpenOffice (they have their own office suite, no matter how crappy). Again, OpenOffice is opensource, so...

Oracle likes all of the above, to a varying but still high, degree.

Oracle is also a ruthless, almost barbaric company when considering their sales practices, but I prefer them to IBM any day. Oracle is like Attila's Huns - they pillaged for the money and the women, but they never tried to bullshit you with "we come in the name of the Lord" - that is IBM's style, with their fake and cynical pretense of contributing to open source and standards.

Look up

[einhverfr]

"Occultation" in the dictionary. It's an astronomical term and refers to what happens when one heavenly body is concealed because another heavenly body passes in front of it.....