Re: Oracle on Linux enhancement request, need your support!

On 06 May 1998 19:55:01 +0200, Bjorn Borud <borud_at_guardian.no> wrote:
>["Pei L. Ku" <pku_at_gte.net>]
>|
>| * Assuming Linux commnuity is advocating for a cost-free Oracle on
>| Linux, how are you going to convince Oracle to spend development
>| money on a port that will essentially be a zero-revenue (or worse,
>| negative earning) port? After all, Oracle is a proft-seeking
>| business.
>
>whatever gave you the impression that people are looking for a
>cost-free port of Oracle on Linux? the operating system may be free,
>but that doesn't mean everything that runs under it has to be free as
>well.

 <snip>
>
>the Linux community is different. first of all, the community is more
>densely populated with people who have intimate knowledge of their
>systems. something breaks or stops working, chances are that the
>problem will be solved within hours or days -- if the person who
>detected the problem isn't able to resolve the problem herself.
>

An explosion of linux oracle clients would severely dilute this community, much like usenet when it opened up to the big commercial outfits, and the web when everyone and his brother bought Frontpage. (In the US, there is even a humorous TV commercial by IBM, showing a webmaster demoing a couple of pages to a customer, and the customer goes "can this link to my payables and my vendors and" blabla, and the nerd goes "uh, I don't know how to do that".)

>Linux too is different from OSes like HP-UX or NT in the sense that it
>was made by programmers for programmers. isolating and explaining
>errors on a Linux system is a lot easier than under most other OSes
>because the OS itself and the tools that usually come with it can be
>used to probe almost every aspect of the system.

Are those tools suitable for most MIS types? NIMNSHO.

>
>I've been working on commercial UNIXen running Oracle and the one
>common denominator is that I always keep wishing I could develop the
>code under Linux so I wouldn't have to spend time trying to iron out
>wrinkles with primitive programming tools.

Naw, keep it mumbo-jumbo so we can keep our rates up over the MSCE's! :)

>
>| On the other hand, this could be a bonanza for Oracle if their Tech
>| Support charges Linux users for tech support by the minute (say,
>| $4.00/min, based on an average of $240/hr rate for a typical
>| consultant from Oracle Consulting) with no expressed or implied
>| gurantee to resolve the tech issues (since the techincal problem
>| could be OS/HW related). Of course the user will get charged for
>| the time they are put on-hold and the time the techical support
>| 'researched' the problem. ;-)
>
>I never call Oracle support anymore period even if the site has a
>support contract. by the time they have figured out a solution or
>found a person that has some clue what I'm even talking about, I have
>already solved the problem.

I've had pretty good luck lately. Not always instantaneous, but not weeks or incorrect, either.

>
>also note that I would never have had any reason to call them if the
>problems had occured under Linux, because I would have had the tools
>to pinpoint the problem in a matter of seconds. (the problem I had
>was with file permissions, but Oracle kept saying that it was out of
>memory -- which was silly, because the machine had about 120Mb of free
>memory and had not used a single byte of swap yet).

You've got to know how to work the system to escalate the problem beyond the new grads.

>
>the people who need to call support, and who will indeed have their
>problems solved, will do so and they will be able to pay for Oracle's
>time, but I suspect that many Linux users will do just fine without
>Oracle, sharing experiences through online forums.
>
>that being said, if Oracle allocated one or two _technical_ people
>(people who have worked on the Oracle code or who know it intimately)
>to answer selected postings on a dedicated USENET newsgroup I would
>suspect that they'd be able to cover 90% of the support the Linux
>community needs.

Heck, if they dedicated a couple of engineers to do the port, they could get $millions worth of publicity for it!

>
>hiring two people to answer questions on the USENET costs a minute
>fraction of what Oracle spends on marketing, but it would buy a *LOT*
>of goodwill among developers and it would make Oracle a very
>attractive database for Linux. Oracle probably spends more money on
>stickers than it would cost to hire an entire platoon of technicians.
>
>do the math. I can't see why they wouldn't jump all over it.

The math includes dividing by 0, which messes up the MBA's spreadsheets. :)

>
>| * I'd doubt Oracle would release source code to the Linux community
>| (or any place outside of Oracle, for that matter). I'm sure Sybase,
>| Informix, IBM, and a sleuth of other companies would love to look at
>| the guts of Oracle.
>
>why would Oracle release the source code? you can buy a source
>license for Solaris and HP-UX -- that still doesn't mean that Oracle
>will sell you a source code license for customers running those OSes.

Because the close-knit community that is linux won't accept black boxes.

>
>on the other hand; hiring capable Linux people might just lead to an
>Oracle that is faster and leaner than the current server. quite a few
>of the people I know that have intimate knowledge of Linux are
>perfectionists first and peformance freaks second. they write or
>contribute to code that is ON DISPLAY -- anyone can and will criticize
>their code.

Anarchy doesn't scale well.

>commercial code is usually not visible to anyone outside the company.
>this dictates that the code is a product of the programmer-culture
>that exists within the company. in its state of isolation this
>culture may produce suboptimal code. not only performance-wise, but
>also with respect to overall design, cleanliness, maintainability and
>readability.
>
>perhaps Oracle could do something like what sun did: let Linux-people
>port Java to Linux.

Now, that's a good idea. However, the linux-people might not be able to stop laughing long enough when the commercial code comes to light.

>
>| BTW, knowing Oracle's architecture and porting strategy, I believe
>| it would be fairly simple to port Oracle to Linux.
>
>I have heard the exact same from several sources. I have also heard
>rumors that Oracle employees successfully _have_ ported Oracle to
>Linux in order to test it.

Jeez, if they can do MPE/Ix...

>
>| However, unless the business issues I outlined above can be
>| addressed, I don't expect to see Oracle on Linux anytime soon...
>
>I think Oracle will have to port their database to Linux sooner or
>later. Linux is growing and is said to have several times the "market
>share" of NT. even if only a fraction of the deployed Linux systems
>are within the business arena it is still probable that Linux has a
>greater "market share" than NT in the commercial business arena.
>
>I also think that other companies will port their databases to Linux.
>
>personally I would be embarrassed not to port to Linux if I was Larry
>Ellison. it would only prove that, not only was I out of touch with
>current trends in the industry, but I would not believe in the message
>I was trying to put forth about Microsoft.

Naw, he's too busy playing with hypercubes, NC's and such to bother with left-field stuff like servers for '286's.

>
>
>I have experienced _exactly_ the same situation with WWW. a few years
>ago, when I tried to convince companies that WWW would be a very good
>way of publishing information both within the company and globally
>people told me that it wasn't interesting or that it would never gain
>the popularity it has today.

There have been a whole lot of other neato things that didn't make it. People thought I was nuts advocating broadband in the early 80's. They were right, the infrastructure would have been too expensive. I thought one guy was nuts for wanting to run his company on a bunch of networked Apple II's (when they were new). Ever hear of Xerox Star? Do you know who invented the Personal Computer? Ed the Dentist?

>
>some companies even stated at the beginning of the "WWW-era" that they
>would certainly NEVER waste money on something like that.
>
>guess what happened. companies are basically running amok on the net.
>it has become a multi-billion dollar industry and *everyone* and
>everything has a website. companies even have intranets and whatnot.
>
>Bill Gates' attitude towards the Internet was much like the attitude
>to Linux many software companies have today. he basically screwed up
>big-time because he didn't understand what he was seeing. Bill Gates
>_still_ doesn't understand what makes the Internet tick.

But he's doing a darn good job changing it to what he thinks should make it tick... fee for data. Or fee for no data.

>
>in a few years from now we will be laughing at companies who were slow
>to adopt Linux while talking about crushing Microsoft or delivering
>open systems.
>
>oh yes, Oracle *will*port to Linux.
>
>-Bjørn

-- 
These opinions are my own and not necessarily those of Information Quest
jgarry@eiq.com                           http://www.informationquest.com
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