Re: How to determine database market share?

DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org> wrote:

> > I have been having a debate recently on another forum about database
> > market penetration and how to measure it.
 

> Your life must be exceedingly boring.

Fuck you. I could easily say the same about you from the amount of time and effort you put into to the Oracle groups here! BTW, I appreciate that you are one of the best contributors to the ng in terms of help/Kb.  

> > My point of view would be that even for companies which *_only_*
> > produce databases (Oracle until recently, MySQL, say now), it is
> > impossible from their financial filings to determine how many
 

> Your statement is incorrect on its face.

This is English? Too much sake?

> Orcle has been producing
> many products for more than a decade. Your ignorance is not Oracle's
> lack of product offerings: You should not equate the two.

Ok, Ok, I had neither the time nor the inclination to write that Oracle "was" primarliy a db company but not entirely but has in the last two years been acquiring other (service based - Siebel, whatever) companies like there's no tomorrow.

Would it be fair to suggest that up until about 1-2 years ago Oracle was *_primarily_* a db company, but has now moved very much into the "added value" services sector of the market. Sorry about my sloppy wording, but one can't always write a novel in response to a newsgroup post.  

> > a) paid for installs there are
> > and
> > b) if an install is paid for, how much was paid (VAR, Corporate
> > resellers, OEM agreements, <insert contractual agreement of your
> > choice>).
 

> Apparently you have never read a license agreement

You're bang smack on the mark with that one. I just press install and let her rip...

> and never heard of a site license.

Would you believe that I have?

> I would suggest that before you engage in a debate on
> a topic you familiarize yourself with it.

My point is/was that it is difficult to get any reasonable idea of the number of paid for installs ofa particular db server in a given (country, region, continent... whatever), because what one gets on a web site for a printed licence is not necessarily what customer x who is planning on 250 installs is going to pay - you would agree with that, I presume?  

> Is 1 $10,000 license for product A worth 1 $2,500 license for product
> B? Is it worth 4X as much? What if one is a per user license and the
> other a per CPU license? A site license? What is one system is connected
> to users via client-server and the other to an application server
> connected to the internet?

Here you are merely echoing my points - it is difficult to determine market share based on revenue, because given that Oracle (or any other company that works in Ireland and/or the US) is not obliged to break down their figures by department.

I know that Oracle makes a profit of (off the top of my head) 500M$ per annum. That tells me precisely nothing about how many systems they have installed. They could have (to take my previous example) Ryanair paying them 400M$ and the other clients could be loss-leaders.

The thrust of my post, which you have failed to address, is how to establish a reasonable criteron for determing market share of a given db server in a given market place. I have yet to be dissuaded that job ads are not as good a measure as any.  

> My guess is that Amazon.com has one Oracle license agreement. My guess
> is that eBay does too. Two licenses? What if part of the license cost
> is an agreement to share services? Of what relevance is the license's
> dollar cost?

*_SWEET DIVINE JESUS_*. I know!!!!! See above for the issue about market share and revenue - I am attempting (in the face of (so-called) internet surveys, geek-speak, marketo-babble to determine a decent metric (that's "way of measuring" to you) of market penetration. I appreciate that, for (the Irish) example Ryanair might have two Oracle engineers on call 24.7.365 - how much does that cost?

And even if Oracle had only two installations in Ireland (say Ryanair and the Government), that might make them hugely rich in revenue, but not big in terms of installations.  

> You might want to go back to watching American Idol. ;-)

What is American Idol?  

> Basically I've said what Billy said but with more words.

See my response.

Paul...

-- 

plinehan __at__ yahoo __dot__ __com__

XP Pro, SP 2, 

Oracle, 9.2.0.1.0 (Enterprise Ed.)
Interbase 6.0.1.0;

When asking database related questions, please give other posters 
some clues, like operating system, version of db being used and DDL.
The exact text and/or number of error messages is useful (!= "it didn't work!").
Thanks.
 
Furthermore, as a courtesy to those who spend 
time analysing and attempting to help, please 
do not top post.