Re: Could Mark Townsend please comment on this question re: Standard Edition

From: DA Morgan <damorgan_at_psoug.org>
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 16:27:10 -0700
Message-ID: <1160954825.379978@bubbleator.drizzle.com>

hpuxrac wrote:
> Niall Litchfield wrote:

>>> There were several.  If you want a short recap here you go:
>> here's my take. Given that asking Oracle to comment definitively in
>> usenet seems a little bit ambitious.

>
> Were you having better luck getting this area straightened out by
> communicating with oracle via other channels? If so my apologies then.
>

>>> 1) Why does oracle ship the product with the options packs installed
>>> configured and ready to use when in fact one can never license those
>>> packs?
>>>
>>> a) is that a bug and should it be reported as such to oracle support?
>>>
>>> b) if it is not a bug then why is it done like that?
>> No it isn't a bug. It's a design feature. This isn't intended to be
>> flippant, if you think about how AWR works it isn't the sort of thing
>> that can be removed easily from one code base (EE) in order to fit the
>> others.

>
> There are a lot of different opinions in this area. Is is possible
> that oracle wants people to be confused about the licensing?
>
> One way to think about it is that if AWR really cannot be turned off
> then everyone that uses standard edition should be able to use it or at
> least license the usage of it. Similar considerations might apply to
> other parts of the other packs.
>
> One poster hinted in this thread that some oracle sales people sell
> some subset of their customers standard edition license but
> expect/allow (?) these customers to use more of those features. That's
> not the type of typical conduct that most oracle professionals would
> want to be involved in at least in my opinion. Then again, if such
> alleged agreements were written down and signed off ... who knows.
>
> Lots of confusion in this area.
>
> If oracle really has put such serious development effort in this area
> that these features cannot easily be turned off, then maybe they should
> be free to everyone using standard edition? After all with the name of
> standard edition shouldn't everything that you need come along with one
> standard price?
>

>>> 2) Is the product properly designed so that it is fully functional
>>> without using any of the packs?
>> Yes, the option packs certainly make the use of Oracle more
>> straightforward but you can manage Oracle perfectly well without them -
>> though database control/grid control becomes an almost complete waste of
>> time given the fact that it is built assuming all packs will be licensed.
>>

>
> This was a question more for oracle than for anyone else.
>

>>> 3) What are the implications for any people who use grid control and
>>> have a set of enterprise edition and standard edition databases that
>>> they need to manage/monitor/support?
>> Great question as far as SE goes - EE clients can be monitored by either
>> Grid or database control, but then given that Mark has suggested that
>> the thinking is that companies running SE don't need to monitor or
>> manage their databases (quite an extraordinary suggestion in my opinion)
>>   then presumably they haven't paid much thought to this subject and/or
>> are happy that money that could/should have gone to them goes to people
>> who sell monitoring tools.
>>

>
> Thanks I kind of liked that question myself but again it's more
> intended for oracle.
>

>>> 4) Are there any potential legal implications for both oracle and
>>> oracle customers because oracle is shipping a product that has features
>>> enabled and ready to use that one cannot license?
>> Great question, especially for AWR that is adding additional useless
>> processing overhead (admittedly not much) to SE databases, that is there
>> is processing going on/storage being used and so on, that SE customers
>> cannot use. it would be interesting actually to see how AWR in
>> particular compares with various legislations definitions of computer
>> misuse.
>>

>
> It would be nice to get this area straightened out without involving
> the suits.
>

>>> That's probably a good set of items to start with.
>>>
>> I still, though to be honest I don't have much hope, stay with my
>> original suggestion way back when that Oracle just take our money
>> (http://www.petitiononline.com/oraman/petition.html) namely

>
> What ever happened with the petition? Any updates?
>

>> "We request that Oracle Corporation make all of its Enterprise Manager
>> management packs available to all of its customers at the same price,
>> regardless of the edition of the Oracle product that they have purchased."
>>
>> At the time Mark suggested that Oracle preferred to talk directly to
>> customers, presumably they have a much larger sample that suggests that
>> standard edition customers don't want to manage their databases
>> responsibly.

>
> That still seems to be the party line at this point.

I know this suggestion won't be greeted with enthusiasm but I think we owe it to Mark to back off and give him a chance to run the internal gauntlet and get back to us.

Oracle is a very large corporation and I suspect that few, except Larry, are able to make change by fiat.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org

Received on Sun Oct 15 2006 - 18:27:10 CDT