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U.K. Government Seeking To End Reliance On Oracle
jfruh writes: The U.K. Cabinet Office has reportedly asked government departments and agencies to try to find ways to end their reliance on Oracle software, a move motivated by the truly shocking number of Oracle licenses currently being paid for by the British taxpayer. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs alone has paid £1.3 million (US$2 million) per year for some 2 million Oracle licenses, or about 200 licenses per staff member.
per-client licence is 1 per user usually, and then you have several applications, each of which need a licence.. and the number quickly rockets up.
Add to that old applications that people no longer use, but somewhere in the bowels of accounting are still being renewed and you can easily get 200 per user (well, easily if you're the kind of bureaucracy like a government organisation).
I imagine they'll rationalise these Oracle licences ... by buying 200 SQL Server licences per user.
The problem is in how Oracle defines the need for licenses.
Got 200 systems, and all of your users could in theory touch those systems ... whammo, they want full licensing for each instance for each user. Oracle makes it into a technical concern.
Want to add more cores? Give us more money. Want to make something accessible via the internet? Give us more money. Want another instance? Start from scratch on that instance, give us more money, then give us more money, and finally we'll tack a little more money on.
There really is no limit to the amount of money Oracle feels entitled to, and if you don't have one central entity handling all of your licenses, you're screwed. And, really, having one central entity doesn't guarantee you a damned thing.
As far as Oracle is concerned, it's # of cores x # of theoretical users x # of instances x how much they can get away with.
Oracle's price gouging is pretty much legendary. And most anybody who has it has gone through this has seen it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The thing is that it is not a Oracle == SQLServer, or Oracle == PostgresSQL equation
Oracle has expanded their offerings through acquisitions to sit on top of licensing for everything from operating systems, to middle ware, to user applications, all of which are well beyond the range of any competing database.
Not to mention that Oracle sales reps make zero attempt to lower the long term licensing costs when closing a deal. Your only real chance to modify your licensing agreements are during a true-up exercise, and very few people have the competency to understand and negotiate decent contracts.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
Er, the British Royal Navy has been sailing ships under the name Enterprise longer than the US Navy has existed.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
What you say was true for pgsql 8, in 9 you can have hotstandby www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/hot-standby.html. Also some application delivery controller can analyze sql statement on the wire to enable replication.