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Amazon's Move Off Oracle Caused Prime Day Outage in One of its Biggest Warehouses, Internal Report Says (cnbc.com)
Amazon is learning how hard it can be to move off of Oracle's database software. From a report: On Prime Day, while the e-retailer was dealing with a major website glitch that slowed sales, the company was also dealing with a technical problem in Ohio at one of its biggest warehouses, leading to thousands of delayed package deliveries, according to an internal report obtained by CNBC. The problem was in large part due to Amazon's migration from Oracle's database to its own technology, the documents show. The outage underscores the challenge Amazon faces as it looks to move completely off Oracle's database by 2020, and how difficult it is to re-create that level of reliability. It also shows that Oracle's database is more efficient in some aspects than Amazon's rival software, a point that Oracle will likely emphasize during this week's annual OpenWorld conference in San Francisco.
Between Java and their Enterprise platforms, if Oracle spent as much time listening and responding to their customers as they spent threatening them, they might be in a far better position today. Any major platform transition is going to have problems unless you're exceptionally lucky. There's just too many moving parts in Enterprise systems for humans to get everything right on the first try. Oracle won't tout all of the problems people have moving ONTO their software from a competitor, but that transition pain happens too.
Every year that goes by, it seems like Oracle is in a more tenuous position, despite their increased revenue. They've already lost the SME space -- I don't know of a single company anywhere in our client base, or within my sphere of influence, that still uses Oracle software. Organizations are bumping up against the limits of NetSuite -- the costs to integrate 3rd-party or industry-specific components, compared with other ERPs, are turning out to be more significant than expected. So we have clients and vendors migrating ERPs over time.
Oracle is becoming the Comcast of the software world. They treat everyone like crap, but were so deeply embedded that they were hard to dislodge. With every passing year, that is less true, and I think Oracle knows it. Unfortunately, they seem to be choosing to double-down on the "treat everyone like crap" strategy, rather than actually fixing the systemic problems that might eventually sink them...
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Don't forgot, their new Java licensing scheme: Per physical core on the server side, and also by named user on the client side. $10 each. Yes, even if all the users use the workstation in shifts, they want to be paid 3 times or more. Combine that with the rapid deprecation of features (JavaFX, Java Web Start), and the Chrome catching version numbering scheme, and you have a recipe for disaster if you choose Java for any projects today. In fact, if you've done any development in Java, now might be the time to investigate alternative cross-platform technologies, like .NET.
.NET over Java. What's the world coming to? So, for clarification, is there any possibility that MS could pull an Oracle with .NET?
I cannot believe I just recommended
I think most people don't understand that the actual database product is rock solid. It's Oracle middleware that needs to die in a fire. That and their licensing which makes Microsoft look like the good guy. I don't understand how they can make a good dbms but fail so miserably on the middleware.
The bulk of Oracle DB was made in the past, at a time when Oracle the company actually employed talented engineers, designers, and programmers.
It really was built to be rock solid and with plenty of features to make heavy workloads a breeze.
Sadly that time has long since past and is not the Oracle the company of today.
A large portion of their middleware was either a 3rd party acquisition they purchased and had their off shore code monkeys try to integrate, or was actually made by said offshore code monkeys, but in either case done so poorly and haphazardly it's a wonder they even run let alone expect to work well.
You know how Sun Microsystems made some amazing tech, and then was bought by Oracle?
You can almost think of Oracle DB as being a product made by an outside company such as "Old Oracle", that was purchased up by "Current Oracle" and fucked up like everything else they touch.
Oracle the company, of the past, actually had a sizable employee base of talent and those people put it to work.
Oracle the company of today is, last I heard, about 90% sales and lawyers in licensing, and 10% overhead. Their technical staff doesn't even round up to 1% as the vast majority is done by outside consultants and outsourced offshore code farms.