
Why the sun shines for Oracle and it’s Cloudy for others - snaky
http://vanpupi.stepi.net/index.php/2017/02/23/why-the-sun-shines-for-oracle-and-its-cloudy-for-others/
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cwmma
I've joked in the past that my Oracle is my 5th favorite database behind
postgres, sqlserver, mysql and being punched in the face, the reason isn't
anti oracle hate, it's because when I've used oracle db it feels like the
company is actively trying to dissuade me.

To connect from node on a mac unlike postgres, mysql or sqlserver where you
just install a module (that may or may not need to compile via node-gyp) you
must

1\. make an oracle account 1a. make sure you prassword donesn't contain
<>();%or \ 1b. if your password is too long then oracle truncates them either
on storage or verification but not both 1c. try get your co worker to try to
log into his oracle account on your computer 1d. just use his account on his
computer 2\. download the various versions of instant client you need 3\.
follow these obtuse [1] install steps 4\. add a tnsnames.ora file somewhere
5\. when login fails update your host file to match the name of current host
system

To say I would never use this voluntarily is an understatement, the only
reason we are using this is because somebody already on oracle is handing us a
wad of cash to use oracle, I don't really see those people who use it being
the types who need a free trial to get onto the cloud, people use oracle
because they can't quite oracle.

1\. [https://github.com/oracle/node-
oracledb/blob/master/INSTALL....](https://github.com/oracle/node-
oracledb/blob/master/INSTALL.md#instosx)

~~~
ismail
having to integrate with oracle software on a pretty regular basis I have come
to realize: Oracle software is extremely complex, simple things take more
effort than they should.

Oracle tools are not optimized for developers of today. A key selling point to
enterprises is your developers could be more productive with their point and
click IDE/interfaces.

These days with the tooling around open source I believe you can get things
done much faster (and have done this) the code is more maintainable etc.

Second disadvantage consider oracles commerce framework atg. They have their
own concepts and terms for things that are in open source solutions making it
confusing for developers familiar with open source frameworks. This could be
on purpose to sell more consulting for partners.

Next the is the cost of training and up skilling junior devs. With open source
you could probably teach yourself try searching for oracle atg tutorials.
Check the # of stackover flow questions vs magneto.

Fourth: I have seen people who are "oracle developers" (fusion, odi, erp, atg
etc) are mostly just product specialists. Give them a text editor and tell
them to write something and deploy to a paas , commit to version control and
they struggle.

Finally the software tends to be ops heavy encouraging bad practices like no
version control or automation.

All of these factors are not considered in the purchase or "ROI" calculation,
but some of them could seriously hurt your return.

I have seen companies spend millions in implementation of an oracle product
only to use < 10 % of features and the same business objectives could have
been achieved at the fraction of the cost.

* excuse typos on mobile

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pionar
The fact that you need Watson to figure out Oracle licensing has soured me on
ever using them for anything in the future.

Running Oracle databases on Windows doesn't just suck, it's extremely more
expensive for licensing. Oracle almost forces you to instead set up Oracle
Linux servers for this purpose.

I've also been seeing Microsoft reaching out to Oracle customers trying to
incentivize them to switch to Azure/Windows/SQL Server. "We'll throw in some
money for the engineering effort to switch!", things like that.

------
padseeker
From the article;

"So for Oracle in my opinion, the sun is still shining on premises and I do
hope for them the clouds will come, but the way it is now, I’m afraid they‘ll
miss this train."

It's way beyond that. Larry Ellison didn't just miss the train, he said where
the train was going was crap, and sat on sidelines for way too long. They had
a chance early on but LE thought he was smarter than everyone else.

Oracle's saving grace is it's legacy business. Lots of older and bigger
companies have Oracle and they can upsell those customers.

But every day a new tech company is born and none of them are adding Oracle.
Baring a minor miracle it will be a slow but still profitable decline. There
isn't much of a chance they will catch up, much less keep pace.

~~~
pram
Larry Ellison said the future was in "Grid Computing" (whatever that means)
which is why a lot of versions of Oracle software had a 'g' appended.

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F_J_H
Looks like Oracle is starting to "lose the hearts and minds" even of the
faithful:

[http://www.vesterli.com/2017/02/14/losing-hearts-and-
minds/](http://www.vesterli.com/2017/02/14/losing-hearts-and-minds/)

key quote: "If you are an Oracle developer with more than 10 years until
retirement, I advise you to start planning for your time after Oracle."

It's too bad, I really like Oracle APEX, (the rapid web and mobile development
framework that is included with the DB) since you can build and deploy highly
functional/rich apps very quickly, which is the big thing end users care
about. (i.e. the same reason foxpro and MS Access were so popular).

Anecdotally, I've been hearing from my consulting peers that companies are
actively looking to move off Oracle as they don't like being "bullied onto the
cloud", and are starting to look at the migration tools in EDB Postgres. That
might be a good source of consulting revenues going forward...

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codingdave
We do work with Oracle for our storage hardware in our data center. As a SAN
provider, they get the job done. But the only reason we would consider
expanding our use of them to other layers of our stack is because there are
performance benefits to using them across the entire stack. But that is it. We
haven't found any other meaningful reasons to use their products at higher
layers. So I'm not sure I would make the leap to trusting them as a cloud
player -- I know they have the tools, but I don't really think of them as
being full-stack players. They have always been pretty bottom-heavy in where
their expertise falls.

~~~
CyberDildonics
Without paying for Oracle licenses how much more hardware or optimization man
power could you afford?

------
loukrazy
The only thing I learned from this post is that there are people who like
Oracle and want to use them more.

~~~
gozur88
I like Oracle's product. It's reliable, and very fast. You can find people
who've been using it for a long time and understand how to get the last ounce
of performance from your database. Unlike some of the OSS database engines,
you don't get halfway into a project and find you can't index dates, or some
certain kind of query is slow and there's no way around it.

That said, dealing with Oracle the company is painful, and I wouldn't do it if
I were by myself or running a small shop. Fortunately, I work for BigCo, and
we have People who do that sort of thing. By the time it gets to me all the
business stuff is worked out, the database is installed, and I'm getting an
email with my account information.

------
insulanian
Oracle will live in the same way IBM lives. Java EE + Oracle is the new COBOL
+ Mainframes

~~~
F_J_H
Oracle is not just the DB though, they have a lot of applications across
several industries, such as utilities, health care, etc. And, there is also
Oracle E-Business suite, which is a big competitor to SAP in the financial
management system space.

So, they have other sources of revenue as well, and can likely build a large
revenue stream of subscription services for business applications. (i.e.
running PeopleSoft, EBS, etc. in the cloud).

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lherl
Oracle have been investing heavily in what they're referring to as their "next
generation" cloud. See here [https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/bare-
metal](https://cloud.oracle.com/en_US/bare-metal) (supports VMs too). They've
invested quite heavily in development centres in Seattle and SFBA with a bunch
of hires from AWS, Azure, Joyent etc.

------
geodel
Oracle seems to be investing heavily in cloud solutions. They are not yet the
member of CNCF. May be it is unimportant or maybe they think some Java EE
solution shoved in Oracle cloud would be what is required by customers.

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ProAm
I thought all Oracle Cloud was running in AWS for now?

~~~
officelineback
Can't possibly be true if you hear all the shade Andy Jassy throws towards
Oracle.

