
Oracle's Declaration to Sun Customers ... and IBM - fogus
http://www.oracle.com/features/suncustomers.html
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neovive
" ...tightly integrating Oracle software with Sun hardware."

Does this mean support for Oracle software on Linux will slowly degrade?
Oracle would likely prefer to sell you the entire suite of hardware, OS and
software vs. just selling software.

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tsuraan
When I was interviewing with the DB2 team for IBM, they mentioned that the
high-end IBM database servers implement special instructions (CPU-level) for
accelerating certain DB operations. I don't know any more details than that,
but I'd guess that's where Oracle is going to go with SPARC.

~~~
ajross
I'm not aware of any DB2-specific instructions, but POWER6 and above implement
a decimal floating point instruction set, allowing things like regulatoriliy-
mandated financial computations to be hardware accelerated instead of computed
in software. That's clearly a nod to the same market that is buying DB2.

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rm-rf
Oracle makes up a magic number called a 'core factor' that determines license
costs for a given platform. By manipulating that number, Oracle gets to favor
one platform over another by making it cheap or expensive to license Oracle
products on a particular platform.

Right now my IBM reps are trying to convince me that I can replace a 88 SPARC
CPUs on couple E25k's with POWER on IBM hardware. They argue that with POWER,
I'd have less than half as many CPU's to license, and the reduction in per-CPU
Oracle license and maintenance costs will pay for the IBM servers.

To counter that, all Oracle has to do is change the core factor for licensing
SPARC processors, making Oracle licensing costs on SPARC hardware less
expensive than POWER or Itanic hardware. That would drive enterprise customers
away from HP & IBM and toward SPARC, as the Oracle license cost for a given
performance level could be manipulated such that the TCO on Sun is less than
competitors.

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crad
No mention of MySQL anywhere in that declaration, which is interesting given
the EU's regulatory body concerns.

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seldo
It seems pretty conspicuously absent, in fact.

MySQL's best hope is that Sun throws it overboard before the acquisition
completes; there's no way it will survive within Oracle -- it competes
directly as a zero-cost alternative to Oracle's core products.

~~~
mikedouglas
Oracle would be crazy to give up MySQL. Controlling it, they can ensure it'll
never compete with their high-end products, while taking the air out of the
entry db market.

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jhancock
postgres works great and keeps getting better. Oracle and Sun are both
irrelevant to most startups.

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tsally
I really want to know what Orcale's real plan is. Before the acquisition they
have to have figured out some way to reconcile Oracle Linux and Solaris, I
just wish I knew what it was. No matter how you slice it, they are competing
products in a very similar space. I suppose they could continue to develop
both separately and take advantage of having two brands.

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mapleoin
Oracle isn't really developing Oracle Linux since that's just RHEL. All they
do is provide support.

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nailer
They're developing part of the kernel, which will be included in future RHEL
releases. They also have people working on Spacewalk and Xen too IIRC.

~~~
nailer
And Systemtap, which is a fairly important part of both RHEL and OEL I forgot
to add.

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stse
Please Oracle make ZFS GPL as Btrfs is. :)

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ciupicri
Or even better BSD so that BSDs can integrate it, too.

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bd_
BSDs already can; the problem is GPLv2 doesn't let you link with _anything_
else. FreeBSD, for example: <http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFS>

~~~
zts
On the contrary - GPL doesn't let you link with much that isn't GPL. BSD and
CDDL - which ZFS is licensed under - are far more open.

~~~
ajross
Must we have this flame war again? Or if you insist, can you please at least
pack your arguments into one post, complete with competing definitions of
"free", and "open", and sneering sideways attacks at the other side's
development model or developer personalities?

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wwkeyboard
Looks like this is a jab and a hook
<http://www.oracle.com/features/sunoraclefaster.html> . I wonder if their
claims will stand up, and why they are waiting a month to make those claims.

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e40
Has the DOJ approved the merger? Last I heard they hadn't and the value of Sun
was disappearing by the day (because the longer it takes the more people leave
and take with them valuable knowledge).

~~~
amalcon
DOJ approved it; they're waiting on European approval.

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Nwallins
_... dramatically improve hardware performance by tightly integrating Oracle
software with Sun hardware_

Eh? The hardware and its performance stands alone. Adding software cannot
improve the hardware. Only the software performance may be increased by better
hardware utilization.

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rbanffy
Write a million 1 megabyte files on a hard disk formatted with FAT32.

Now, on the same computer, reformat the hard using ext4 and write the same
files.

See the difference?

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Nwallins
Yes, the difference is software. The filesystem performance is better. The
hardware has the same performance.

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TallGuyShort
I'm more curious to know what's going on with the mainframe side of the
industry. Sun recently acquired StorageTek - I wonder if they plan to keep a
lot that to compete with IBM in that regard, too.

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mpm
I read this as Oracle pretending to want to keep the Sun hardware business so
as to drive up the price for the only prospective buyer, HP.

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fugue88
"Dramatically improve Sun's hardware performance...."

I think they're going to use the CPU simulator Sun used to design a processor
(the T1) optimized for MySQL (I think it was) to make a new processor
optimized for Oracle.

Just my 2 cents.

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rbanffy
Erm... I seriously doubt the T1 is optimized for MySQL. Where did you get
this?

