Re: Open Source Oracle?

"Howard J. Rogers" <hjr_at_dizwell.com> wrote:

> I don't think this discussion can be meaningful unless we qualify
> precisely what such features are. Then we can have a parallel debate on
> what we think "enterprise" really means. And hopefully we can then make
> sense of the claims and counterclaims.
>
> But the problem (for me, at least) lies exactly in what you've written:
> Postgres is closing the gap to Oracle by adding these "enterprise
> features", whatever they might be.

Is Postgres really closing the gap, or are they just staying in place on a treadmill?

> Re-phrase that slightly: Oracle is an
> Enterprise-class product and others want a share of that market. Now
> follow through on the (slightly-stretched) logical corollary: Oracle is
> not (particularly) interested in the low and mid-end database market.

I'm not sure that that is at all true. Just because they don't focus on adding new features to attract that segment, doesn't mean that they don't enjoy revenues from it.

> And that's my point. By giving the ancient versions away, they *would* be
> a player in those lesser markets, where MySQL and Postgres already
> largely reign unchallenged.

I've never used Oracle 6 or 7, but from what I read of them they are even harder to run than Oracle 8i and 9i. So I wouldn't be too optimistic on them capturing a great deal of market share away from MySQL for the "just give me something simple" crowd. I think that an aweful lot of the people who would be willing to use ancient Oracle for free are the same people who would be willing to pay for it in the first place--those who realistically look forward to the day they need a big database, and know that the costs of migrating will be high. How much would Oracle have to charge to make it worth their while to port Oracle 6 or 7 to modern OSes and hardwares?

> > I do think that mid-sized
> > Databases could well be run with any of them. So if you don't get
> > Oracle for free, why not check out those that are free and offer
> > similar features?
>
> I'm not checking anything out, because I'm an Oracle boy. Trouble is,
> there'll be a lot of people who will do precisely what you suggest, and
> become a PostgreSQL boy or a MySQL boy. Oracle then loses out, long-term.

On the other hand, I imagine a lot of people who use Oracle 9i now are only using it because they were basically forced out of Oracle 7 by desupport. I don't think it would be good for Oracle sales to essentially tell people "If you hold out on doing upgrades for long enough, we will eventually give you what you have now, for free, forever, and stop bugging you." Too many current paying customers might take them up on that offer.

Xho

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