Re: What's does oracle have that others don't?

What I always consider when working with a product is market share and a management team that is putting money into development. Many of the other databases have come out with features well before Oracle (the shareware version of Ingres was always interesting). However, I always like to think about the future. Take Microsoft products for example. Many people hate Bill Gates and thought that the Borland products were so much better.  However, while IBM, Lotus and Ashton-Tate just kept riding their gravy trains and not enhancing their products, Microsoft was putting products out that got better at each release. Yes, some were lame at first, but now they are kicking the posteriors of products such as Word Perfect and 123.

I see Oracle as being similar to Microsoft in their aggressive development combined with cash flow to fund the development. They keep coming out with new releases of the database and related products. There were many object-oriented databases out there for several years, but Oracle will evolve into an OODB and probably eat these companies for breakfast (which is a shame for the employees of those companies, but I can't do anything about it).

Which brings me to my final point. None of us (except maybe Bill Gates and Larry Ellison) control the market, but we have to live with what it does to us. Those that stuck with Word Perfect because they thought Microsoft was evil even when the rest of the industry was moving to MS Word hurt themselves and their users. Also, "experts" in products that have died off find it hard to get work.

In summary, what does Oracle have that others do not? It has got market share and a strong development commitment. While no one can predict the future with absolute certainty (and some better company may come along and drive Oracle out of business), these two things lead me to believe that the one thing that Oracle has that the others may not is a bright future, both for itself as a company and for those who have mastered its intricacies and therefore become highly employable.

[... getting down off my soap box ...] Received on Sun Jan 07 1996 - 00:00:00 CET