RE: Oracle's relationships with expert DBAs (and the rest of us mere mortals)

 itch          

        That might be. However I used to work for a mainframe company that thought this business of buying your hardware (and generic O.S. a.k.a. Unix) from one vendor and your database from another was just a passing fad. Those customers will soon see the error of their ways and return.

           Well, the mainframe company is just a historical entry in Wikipedia. Eventually those scruffy upstarts got that Unix thing to be passably reliable.

...this is a GREAT thread. I see it differently having been in the trenches
of the company that brought SMPs (Sequent) up to par and surpassed minis

(Unix was the demise of VMS not mainframes). Remember, the mainframe and
mini guys were telling Sequent and Pyramid Technologies that SMPs would never
scale. Just because their predictions turned out wrong doesn't mean mainframes
have no place. Only Oracle Corp can justify absolutist views. The rest of us
should be glad that there are still some choices we can make. Believe me, if
human lives are on the line, you'd have to be pretty drunk on Oracle marketing
literature to choose RAC with ASM over a zSeries mainframe running whatever.

Linux is in dire need of some straightening out. The anarchist "free or die"
thing is a real problem. Linux is good for Larry because it allows him to
usurp a little more control. IBM and HP are at least a little bit in control
when you choose AIX or HPUX, but Linux puts Larry in control. If there is
anything to fear it is Oracle one-stop-shopping.

Opinions are free.

Yes, server volumes are now swayed to Win/Lin and Unix is waning. So is LU6.2, SNA and OS400 and eventually GCOS.

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