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Database Business Problems at Oracle?
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Tue Mar 21, 2006 11:07 AM
from the good-but-not-good-enough dept.
from the good-but-not-good-enough dept.
abb_road writes "Wall Street responded to yesterday's report of a 42% rise in profits by pushing Oracle's stock down. Despite a 77% increase in applications business, investors are worried that Oracle's core database business remains comparatively stagnant. Though Ellison claims that the DB business will grow in double digits over the next few years, it seems that more companies are switching to open source rather than paying Oracle $40,000 a processor."
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Works for me (Score:3, Interesting)
And good books [blogs.com] keep coming out for it, too, which is reassuring.
Re:Works for me (Score:3, Insightful)
If the cost of lower performance is less than $40K per CPU then OSS is the way to go. Since OSS is in a continual state of improvement, I've got to think that it is the selection of choice for anyone with a budget. It
Re:Works for me (Score:5, Insightful)
In an odd way, this may make Oracle's high end database product more secure.
There is no way that Postgres or MySQL is even close to the kinds of scalability and features that Oracle has. Trust me. It's just that people like you don't need certain capabilities that are a very good deal for Oracle customers. Nor do 99% of all applications. But in terms of value 99% of applications doesn't amount to 99% of profit for an outfit like Oracle.
There's no way that MS SQL Server comes close either. Trust me on this one too. I've used both. SQL Server is perfectly adequate and maybe even preferable for many applications, but comparing it to Oracle is a joke. Just recently I read a MS announcement of a middling-huge application that was done on SQL server. I was impressed, until I realized it wouldn't be remotely newsworthy if it has been done in Oracle. It was impressive for SQL Server, and probably only possible given certain aspects of the application.
What Postgres and MySQL mean is that in the long term there are no profits in the low end of the database market for general RDBMS duties, and not much future in the mid-range. Take them out of the picture, and Microsoft has a self-funded machine for nibblng its way into the high end. I'm not saying they won't get there, but I see a potential for financial pain along the way. The market position for SQL Server is really this: it integrates well with the MS tools, and its available on all MS OS platforms (Wince and NT derivatives). If it weren't for that, then it would be a sitting duck.
Oracle XE there mainly as a way to keep mind share. It means a lot more people will be familiar with Oracle technology, providing a cadre of workers who are prepared for large scale apps.
Re:Works for me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Works for me (Score:3, Insightful)
The market is maturing (Score:3, Interesting)
Main use (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about open source... (Score:4, Interesting)
Before you go all Slashbot on me, realize that my company is very conservative with respect to technology, so Open Source is unfortunately not an option here...
Re:I don't know about open source... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I don't know about open source... (Score:3, Informative)
And of course, there's alw
Re:I don't know about open source... (Score:3, Interesting)
Pl/pgSql (That's PostgreSQL's pl/sql) is VERY much like Oracles. Naturally it lack some of it's features, but a rewrite from pl/sql to pl/pgsql is dead easy. That means less manhours ... money talks
Re:I don't know about open source... (Score:5, Insightful)
Forgiving is not something I want out of a database. I want my database to take every possible opportunity to reject bad data.
Open Source vs. Oracle (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Open Source vs. Oracle (Score:2)
What if you need 2 or more processors? What if all your IT work is done in India because of the bean counters and these bean counters are needed to pay for Oracle on your 4 cpu system? Fat chance it will get approva
Re:Open Source vs. Oracle (Score:2, Redundant)
Not t
Re:Open Source vs. Oracle (Score:4, Insightful)
It's about sales, not technology or open source (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, Oracle has been very generous in allowing developer downloads of their DBMS; I was able to take their Linux port, install it on an old box running Red Hat, and port a Microsoft SQL Server-based back end over to Oracle in a couple of days just as an experiment. Obviously, to actually use the product would cost some bucks but this kind of flexibility is what helps keep Oracle's tentacles in so many businesses.
The other thing that the analysts ignored is that the database and enterprise software business isn't so much about having innovative technology, contrary to what was asserted in the Business Week article but rather having an effective sales organization. DBMS and enterprise management software is sales driven, not innovation driven. Executives don't watch commercials about sexy features in the latest rev of Oracle or Sql Server, then order a few copies from Amazon. It's the inside sales teams that patiently build relationships over the years. IBM knows this, Oracle knows this, and MS knows it too. Sybase tried but their hubris and arrogance brought them down. (direct personal experience with that!)
No doubt, while Larry crows about upcoming tech innovations, he's internally yelling at the sales teams to get more aggressive, offer more discounts, and steal more customers from Bill and from the SAP people. He'll eke out a few more percentage points of market share, and the investors will be satisfied for a couple more quarters. That's how the business works.
Re:It's about sales, not technology or open source (Score:4, Interesting)
It's almost like Oracle is doing everything they possibly can to promote MS Sql. They just went gestapo on us about licensing and decided that every person who walks up to a kiosk running an app with an oracle back end needs to be a named user, that or we need to buy per processor licensing. $80,000 for our dual proc backend box buys a lot developer time to port to a different database.
Re:It's about sales, not technology or open source (Score:3, Interesting)
We Made That Mistake (Score:2)
Postgresql vs. Oracle flame-war.... GO! (Score:5, Interesting)
What is Postgresql missing that Oracle has? What does Oracle have that Postgres is missing? When do these features matter?
Let the flaming begin...
Re:Postgresql vs. Oracle flame-war.... GO! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Postgresql vs. Oracle flame-war.... GO! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Postgresql vs. Oracle flame-war.... GO! (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/oracle/115560 [suite101.com]
However, it doesn't really get into nitty gritty. Nice primer, though.
-Tony
Re:Postgresql vs. Oracle flame-war.... GO! (Score:5, Informative)
Here's Google's cache:
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:3Z3Pzf07oboJ:
-Tony
off-the-bat comparison (Score:5, Informative)
- speed
- mutli-way replication
- multi-node clusters
- advanced SQL (cubes, trees, etc)
- finer details of physical data layout (cluster tables, partitioned tables, etc)
- stability (unless you use the bleeding edge, which is brittle, alas)
PG's strong points Oracle:
- price
- relative simplicity and lower resource consumption
- easier administration
- good compatibility with Oracle's SQL
- source availability
Also, PG is perceived as less stable than Oracle, and even less than MySQL. It will take time to dispel this (if untrue).
Re:Postgresql vs. Oracle flame-war.... GO! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Postgresql vs. Oracle flame-war.... GO! (Score:3)
Lies.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we have to stoop to this to make our point?
You can get Oracle server for as cheap as $150 per named user, with a three user minimum last I checked. This is perfect for many small business applications. And there are pricing schemes that gradually go up from there depending on the situation.
There are many great open source databases ( I use SQLite extensively ), but the commercial vendors still bring a lot to the table, and sometimes are even the best choice all things considered ( gasp! )
Not all open source. (Score:2)
Big biz problem (Score:2)
Oracle should take care...! (Score:2)
I wonder what the situation would be if the likes of MySQL, PostGreSQL
mysql (Score:2)
Re:mysql (Score:3, Informative)
MySQL will fall flat on its face far sooner than Oracle will. If your DB is tens to hundreds of terabytes, with gig and larger entries (think VLSI design here) then MySQL will not hold up (well). That said there are other OSS db's that will hold up b
Re:mysql (Score:2)
Believe me... I know. We have an application that supports both MySQL and Oracle. The Oracle side of development just leaves me wondering how the company became so successful with the
This is a GoodThing® (Score:3, Insightful)
When you look at software purchasing patterns, it seems that most software purchases are driven by four things: cost, features, familiarity, and "safety." Open Source software usually competes strongly on the first, moderately well on the second, and not so well on the third and fourth. Asking DBAs to use something they're not familiar with means that they're going to be working slower and harder--not the choice that most people make. In addition, the "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" syndrome sometimes prevents Open Source choices from getting a fair shake. But it appears that Open Source tools are starting to compete on those last two fronts as well.
A lot of geeks like to fiddle around with software on their own, and the "free" part of Open Source plays right to this. After all, are you going to pay for a Microsoft Sequel Server license, or try out MySQL when you're doing something for your own satisfaction? I'm a good example of something similar: I wanted some dynamic Web pages, but I didn't want to pay for ASP support through my ISP. So instead I started looking into PHP and eventually wound up using PHP to handle the dynamic content.
Once people involved in making decisions (not perhaps the decision-makers themselves, but people with input) start using Open Source for themselves, a lot of the "I don't know it so it's harder and slower" goes right out the window. Sure your average CRM developer might not be making the decision, but if they're asked about DB support and they know PostgreSQL because that's what they used to build their roll-your-own blog, they may offer that as an option.
As Open Source comes into use in the market, that helps alleviate the "safety" factor, too. When you can point to a large organization that's successfully running enterprise-grade applications on Open Source, it's easier for the decision makers to rationalize choosing an Open Source solution.
$40K/CPU is BS (Score:5, Insightful)
And if you're negotiating with Oracle directly, something I do not recommend, then all you have to do is mention mySQL or PostgreSQL, and Oracle will drop their prices.
Re:$40K/CPU is BS (Score:3, Interesting)
nitpicking (Score:4, Insightful)
I am sure that there are many consulting firms that can mimick this kind of turn-key solution using PostgreSQL, but I'm not sure that they are as established--that is, give the CEO of XYZ company the warm & fuzzy that they require when they're about to undertake a multi-million dollar project whose backbone has to be a rock-solid DBMS.
It would be fabulous if Vault 10 IT consulting firms could provide this level of service using open source but that's just not the case Right Now(tm).
Its hardware and performance... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oracle is a very good database, no doubt about that, but what is the need of the business? As hardware becomes less and less expensive the performance and stability of the database becomes less of a differentiator.
It is true the market for databases is growing, but it is not the high-end database market. Especially now that the definition of high-end is moved up by the availability of less expensive hardware. It is better to spend money on good hardware, backup and storage, rather than on the database license.
So why by an oracle database? Only if you need the really high end performance of your database, that outranks the affordable hardware, you'll need to look at products like oracle.
Right tool for the right job (Score:2)
Honestly It's all about ROI (Score:2, Insightful)
40K a processor? (Score:2)
Man thats expensive. Tho i hear Microsoft SQL2005 will be approaching the same ( silly ) cost levels.
One Example? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow. Spare me the spin.
Isn't it also possible that the far cheaper closed source alternatives [sqlpass.org] are getting a little business [com.com] as well?
Oracle has always been pricey, but for a long time their DB features were hard to beat. Competitors, both closed and open, and finally getting to the point where they are on all levels with Oracle. [gartner.com]
No one really pays $40k/processor (Score:3, Informative)
$40k per processor is "list price". In reality, there are other options, such as Kunta Kinte [slashdot.org] points out.
Further, the kinds of companies that have huge investments in data centers (Oracle's primary target) negotiate volume contracts with Oracle. These contracts push that $40k sticker price way way way down. (Previous employer paid under $20k for a typical Oracle server license, unlimited users, no time limits.)
Considering that these companies really need their data, and have hundreds of applications (not all of them even cataloged) already written to use Oracle, this money is just basic business expense.
Prices listed wrong - some clarification (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure someone will point out another nitpick that it can't do, but the practical fact is that you can buy Standard Edition One for $5000/processor and get a fully functional database.
For the price-aware, you can even buy a 1, 2, or 3 year license for something like $2-3K.
And, no, Oracle isn't paying me to shill for them. I just work for a company that uses Oracle, and I hate to see the "Oracle costs $40,000" meme repeated here.
A little perspective on Oracle pricing... (Score:4, Interesting)
6 years ago, before the
Cisco networking gear. Sun servers. EMC disks. Oracle database.
So you paid a few mil for the network. A few mil for the servers. A few mil for the EMC disks. And a mil or two for Oracle at $10K/cpu (list)
NOW, Oracle says "we have 10g RAC, use us to replicate across CPUs. Don't pay $3M + $1M/year for Sun support... buy a rack of Linux servers (or blades) and hardware costs $250K versus $3M... support is nearly free because if a machine fails, just pull it from the rack, throw it in the trash, and swap a new one in there.'
And lo, they promoted "Linux is unbreakable" and charged an extra $10K/cpu for this service. Total end cost to customer is LESS than the old solution, and it's way FASTER.
Then, they have another initiative... use ASM and the low-cost storage initiative... use the database to span multiple disks, and handle all the replication/redundancy. Don't pay EMC $3M + $1M/year for Symmetrix support. Put it on lower cost gear (Clariion, Nexsan ATAboy, or *gasp* Apple Xserve RAID even). Spindle speeds are slower, so you buy 2x as many spindles and get the same IOPS. Hey, you save a couple million and pay more per CPU (say $40K/cpu list) for the whole shootin' match.
So your cost goes from (again, broad numbers)
$2M Cisco + $3M Sun + $3M EMC + $2M Oracle = $10M + maintenance
to:
$2M Cisco + $500K Dell + $500K Dell or Apple + $4M Oracle = $7M + maintenance
You save $3M a year! Of course Oracle gets a bigger cut. But it's "win-win."
Of course, there is the one subtlety here -- you are now using Oracle's RAC and ASM so you can use cheap hardware and storage. This stuff is totally proprietary, so if Oracle comes back come renewal time and doubles your per-CPU cost for the software, it's a helluva lot harder to rip it out than just porting stored-procedure code.
Re:Larry Elliot... (Score:2)
An old adage says that yachts are for people who have so much money, they don't know what else to spend it on.
So I don't think it matters what side of the
Re:Business is wising up (Score:2)
Re:Business is wising up (Score:2, Insightful)