Oracle Ready To (Continue) Linux Plunge 84
alphadogg writes "Rumors are swirling yet again that Oracle wants to get cozier with Linux and at least one financial analyst says customers can expect a tighter Linux-based appliance from the database and application vendor by the end of the month."
How can the first post (Score:1, Funny)
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The mods are trying to say the article title makes more sense without the word "linux" in it.
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I, for one... (Score:2)
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Go, Larry!
Seriously, I can't see why Oracle wouldn't just make sure their product is highly portable across major distros. The Highlander play really only seems to work when you're cast with Sean Connnery.
Oracle World bus (Score:1, Informative)
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Yes, Oracle will soon offer a bus with Linux on it.
Speed 3, starring Larry Ellison.Re: (Score:1)
Pros and Cons of Appliances (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly Oracle is definitely going in the direction of creating a linux based appliance. Let's ignore the Oracle Linux Distro. debate and focus more one Appliances themselves. Does the greater slashdot community like the idea of an appliance or dislike. I remember in the MySQL interview last week, MySQL's CEO mentioned he did not like the idea of appliances because the company should focus on what they do best and allow the partners to do the same, thus creating a more robust stack.
Discuss...
Alternate topic: A peanut is neither a pea nor a nut
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Re:Pros and Cons of Appliances (Score:5, Insightful)
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discussion and I am not supposed to comment.
However I would like to comment on the Oracle buying "Best of Breed" while this is strictly a true
statement, a more correct statement would be:-
"Oracle buys the best of the competition and
If anti-trust legislation was interpreted even very loosly Oracle would be in breach for buying Siebel and Peoplesoft. Oracle would like to be Monopoly Capitalists, and, t
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Re:Pros and Cons of Appliances (Score:4, Insightful)
While these appliances would never replace a skilled DBA for a performance-critical system, there are many small/medium-sized businesses with modest DB requirements that would benefit greatly from such a device, and put many a useless, lazy DBA out of work.
Re:Pros and Cons of Appliances (Score:5, Insightful)
For things like MySQL, sure I can see why they would prefer to be a installed db - they do it very well for one thing so they do not need to make an appliance, but Oracle is almost never installed on a server along with other things, you buy a server to run Oracle on. Given that, its a simple step to have the OS get installed with the DB, and keep it updated regularly with patches that have already been tested by Oracle support people.
A skilled DBA would be able to tweak the system anyway once installed - just because its an appliance doesn't mean it has to be fixed in stone, so I can't really see a downside for Oracle on this one.
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That depends on what you're using Oracle for. If your company has an Oracle enterprise license, a reasonable number of Oracle DBAs on staff, and a non-bargain basement hardware budget they'll probably have more than a few Oracle installs that resemble an "embedded" database that most people would use MySQL/Postgres for.
As an example, we're running a custom built application on three servers where
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The thing that really worries me about VMs (and big SANs, for that matter) is the old phrase
Distributing resources across multiple systems reduces the risk that "a broken basket breaks all your eggs", and gets
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Does no one remember "Raw Iron"? (Score:4, Interesting)
There was significant pushback from hardware vendors and users for this sort of integration. From users because it was felt that Oracle would abandon the idea of a database that ran on whatever platforms it could, reducing choice in IT departments. From hardware vendors because it meant that only one provider would benefit, and everyone else was afraid that they'd lose the ability to sell Oracle certified configurations.
And Oracle had a hard time finding an easy platform to deploy it on. At the time, Linux and BSD were not as capable for scaling as they are now. And working with Sun would make integrating Solaris expensive.
Now conditions have changed. Solaris is open and modular. BSD and Linux scale more easily, and on more mature N-way platforms. So it might be a good time to revisit the issue.
However, one has to question the value of an Oracle appliance. Because while large companies are happy to dedicate machines to single tasks, smaller firms are more likely to want to have machines serving multiple roles, which may not come easily to an Oracle appliance (or may cost more if it is required to use Oracle-stack implementations of whatever the need is for).
Yet larger companies have budgets to test, configure, and roll out their own database servers anyway. And Oracle is looking at the small to medium sized IT market.
So I don't know if this is going to get much traction. They're going to, at least, have to create a generic server appliance that maybe comes tuned for Oracle, yet can be used for anything.
That might be a winner.
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Oracle doesn't lend itself to being virtualized. (Score:2)
Maybe if the Oracle appliance itself supported virtualized hosts sharing the remainder of its capacity. That might be interesting...
Re:Oracle doesn't lend itself to being virtualized (Score:1)
I am assuming that... (Score:2)
Also, until recently, I haven't been aware of any decent N-way virtualization implementations... ESX has only recently gotten support for it, and Xen is just breaking onto the scene what with Pacifica and Vandermode.
Unless you go for a cluster configuration. But I understand that's expensive.
It's a good fit f
Hey, I'm not saying it's a good idea. (Score:2)
CTO: Hey Rei, what's the load average of that database server?
Rei: (with caution) 50%
CTO: That's a pretty powerful box compared to that test server we aren't using, right?
Rei: Well yeah, that old box is two years --
CTO: Well I want you to put a few dozen ClearCase volumes on there because its really slow for our developers at site B.
Rei: But, uh... a few dozen... I see
Competition from PostgreSQL and FreeBSD. (Score:2, Interesting)
With a proper data backup strategy, several Opteron-based servers running FreeBSD and using PostgreSQL as the database can often be used to replace hundreds of Sun servers running Oracle. Often times we see vast performance increases, as PostgreSQL is a leaner product in many respects. If you don't need some of the more advanced features of Oracle,
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FreeBSD's network stack and file system are so much faster than Solaris' that you can replace a dozen or so Sun boxes with a single Opteron-based FreeBSD box? Because I know that most of the large database systems I've seen are bandwith-limited at one end or the other, they're rarely CPU-bound. Maybe your old Sun systems are hooked to a 10base-T hub, and you
Re:Competition from PostgreSQL and FreeBSD. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Competition from PostgreSQL and FreeBSD. (Score:4, Interesting)
So while it seems like a good idea, unless you're working under a mandate from the CIO to replace Oracle or Solaris, it's probably cheaper and less disruptive to just stick with what you've got. Just ask any of those people who still run OpenVMS — they'll tell you!
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My desktop [p4] runs circles around many of our old Sun boxes [...]
I seriously doubt your P4 runs circles around them under any sort of *server* workload (ie: in anything other than raw CPU power).
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substantiating at least one of your claims with some
evidence?
Not to say that either FreeBSD or PostgreSQL are poor,
but a "several" opterons replacing hundreds of Sun
servers is a joke, even if the Opteron chip can perform
as well as 10 sparc CPUs.
Either the owner of the installation is incompetent,
which doesn't seem likely given the money they'd have to
blow on the licenses... or you're talking about 50MHz
sparcs from 10 years ago, in which case you are usin
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What sectors? FreeBSD has not done well in the Enterprise I would like to know what sector you are talking about.
Yes PostgreSQL is fine database and yes it works well on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Linux, and even Windows.
I have not seen any surge in FreeBSD use.
I'd Be More Impressed (Score:1)
Rather than combine marketing & market penetration they're going to push 'Yet Another Distro'. What stupidity. The flavor of the month strikes again. Yet another example of Linux/Unix folks not having enough sense to unite in their fight against the dark si
Several smart moves for them (Score:2)
Why do the above? Simple. Small 1-6 ppl companies do not spend the money for Oracle or their apps. But if you offer it to them free, then an industry will sprout up around it. More importantly, once the company is on it, after 6 seats, they ha
Re:Several smart moves for them (Score:5, Informative)
Why do the above? Simple. Small 1-6 ppl companies do not spend the money for Oracle or their apps. But if you offer it to them free, then an industry will sprout up around it. More importantly, once the company is on it, after 6 seats, they have to pay. I would also guess that these companies will want support. At some point, they will pay. Finally, this shuts out MS.
It's not a bad idea, but I think there's a few problems with it. If you were setting up a database for a small company with 1-6 seats would you pick heavyweight Oracle with it's higher costs to maintain, administer, etc, or would you pick PostgreSQL or MySQL which is cheaper to maintain, and doesn't have a mid-range expansion cost associated with it? I know I'd pick an open-source free DB way before I'd pick Oracle.
The reason is that the guys that have 1-6 seat needs are a long ways from actually needing Oracle. The expansion stage from dinky buisiness with very small DB needs to small-medium size is a lot more important (at least initially) than the medium-> large scale transition you'll need when you need the heavyweight stuff from Oracle (and some would even argue that PostgreSQL and MySQL are well used in large-scale businesses as well).
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i think it is a very interesting idea. one thing to keep in mind is that a company with 1-10 people is not going to need an end to end enterprise application. most of the companies of that size that i have worked with are more likely to use an ugly cobbling of proprietary apps designed for their vertical market (software for running a vet's office for example, or one of the various travel agency applications) and off the shelf accounting/bookkeeping.
i think if they could make a lightweight (as in costs
You're looking at the wrong target (Score:2)
Why are you assuming that the target for an Oracle appliance is the companies themselves? Sure, they will be the ones who will eventually use it... but they are not necessarily (nor likely) the ones who will be assembling it, testing it, selling it or supporting it.
An Oracle appliance has a whole lot of value if you're someone selling into a vertical m
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Having the entire stack is arguably more of an advantage to the application designers than it is to Oracle. Of course Oracle is getting into that themselves with the aquasition of Peoplesoft,
Oracle & Linux = Ancient History (Score:2)
I've seen Linux as a strategic platform for years. In 1998, using the initial release of "the slash" code base, I had a blog called "ontopofit.com". Before Pythian [pythian.com] became successful in the dba managed services space, I used to write on there.
I posted on The Pythian Group Blog [pythian.com] earlier this year, reprising and linking to an article that I originally wrote about Orac
Doesn't really make sense (Score:4, Insightful)
There are only two scenarios I could see this actually being practical. One is if there's a seperate dedicated DB server and an application server. However, the loads that occour in the SMB environment rarely warrant this. Most of the time the database and application run on the same server. The second would be to pass the appliance off to ISV's whom install and configure their software and resell it. That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense either because then they are just paying an Oracle tax for something they could do themselves.
Really, the only reason I could see them doing this is to stick it to Red Hat and make PHB's get a boner.
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you make an excellent point. one scenario where i think an oracle appliance might work well is with businesses that are just getting started and little or no existing data/apps to port over to linux. at that stage of the game, they probably can't afford a DBA of either the in-house or consultant variety, nor the many hours of installing and tweaking necessary to produce a well built enterprise app with oracle at it's heart.
i think that what they could afford is a windows client that is easily customized
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Are you kidding? I wrote Windows apps that connected Oracle DBs running on Solaris, VMS, and MVS. It's called ODBC, and it doesn't care where your database is, you just configure the parameters and away it goes. So an appliance would still be very handy, even if your hypothetical programmer couldn't port it to Linux (or more likely wouldn't port it, since you'd then require your users to switch, and probably get signifi
What a shitty headline (Score:1)
Bad Idea: falsely simplifies RDBMS and DBAs (Score:2)
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sleepycat.com (Score:2)
One useful thing they could do would be to put the old sleepycat.com content back up somewhere. There was quite a bit of useful information there about dealing with older versions of Berkeley DB, but now you just get redirected to Oracle's index page. While commercial vendors tend to think in "push the new, deny the old" mode, a lot of us have to deal with what's out there. For example, when you come across software written to an older API, it's nice to be able to go back and read the changelogs and rele
You don't need an operating system (Score:2)
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How about on the client? (Score:2)
As of the 11.5.10 ERP applications, Linux as client still isn't supported. It works for the most part if you spoof your USER-AGENT as OSX safari and use the Sun JVM for applet plugin support.
The death of jinitiator on the client is waaaay overdue. Their isn't anything that the apps are doing that necessitates a custom JVM. Heck, most of what the apps do can be handled with AJAX.
This sounds like the dumbest Oracle idea yet. (Score:2)
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And why would they want another distribution of Linux. It would be better if they continued to work closely with a linux vendor and then could work out a slightly modified version for Oracle.
I would feel more comfortable with Oracle on RH or Suse where the engineers there have tweaked the OS or can tell me exactly what to tweak on their flavor of linux.
And why would I want another flavor of linux in house. How many companies woul
Think Google Appliance (Score:2)
I think, though, the real key to something like this, and make its appeal greater is if Oracle supported the box themselves, remotely. Let *them* deal with patches, upgrade
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They already have something similar, called Application Express (Apex for bonus marks), used to be HTMLDB. As for the 1U box... Yeah, I could see that.
Ew. Oracle without a DBA? That's just asking for trouble.
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I agree with you, but I've seen a number of small shops that buy Oracle because some specialized software they really need uses it. They typically follow the software developer's specs to the letter, buying slightly-above minimum specs, get a consultant (ahem) to install Oracle and then the app, then throw the box in a closet. They completely forget about it, not caring a whit about performance or tuning because it "does what they need it to do" and t
I have some info (Score:1)