June 08, 2006
A Very Special Insult
Tom Kyte's book Expert Oracle 9i & 10g which I reviewed here is going into it's second printing.
It turns out APress quoted me, and made a little booboo. A few of them went out to distributors, and it looks like Tom got a kick out of it. The quote was "Full of plenty of deep insights." but got mistyped as "Full of plenty of deep insults"!
Perhaps we'll be seeing these appear on Ebay?!
Posted by admin at 05:50 PM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2006
A Bit About Sleepycat
If you're interested in Oracle's purchase of various Open Source database technologies there has been some good covereage over at Silicon Beat. Here's a discussion of the Sleepycat purchase and here's our mention of Innobase some weeks back.
Posted by admin at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)
Ellison Speaks of Open Source
At the recent Open World in Tokyo Japan, Larry Ellison spoke about Open Source software. It's no suprise that on the whole he spoke dismissively about Open Source as a threat to Oracle's bottom line. However the simple fact that Open Source is *BEING* mentioned in such important contexts such as keynote speeches, suggests another story. And that's not to mention all of the recent acquisitions as further testament that Open Source is having some impact.
Posted by admin at 04:44 PM | Comments (0)
January 24, 2006
Dizwell's Oracle Wiki
Howard Roger's has a great site full of interesting articles, and howtos. He's just added an Oracle Wiki which looks to be quite a useful resource. They also have an Oracle Forum section.
Posted by admin at 02:31 AM | Comments (0)
January 10, 2006
Foot Discusses Express Edition
Chris Foot over at DBA Zine has an excellent blog entry discussing 10G Express.
What I like most about the entry is that not only does Chris give us a good introductory discussion about this new product, but he also puts it in context of the intended audience, Oracle's purchase of Innobase, and other low-end competitors like Microsoft Access.
I'll also add that I've started writing for DBA Zine as well. Take a look at my first piece, MySQL for the Oracle DBA.
Posted by admin at 01:03 AM | Comments (0)
January 09, 2006
Voyager Worm Mutates
The Oracle Voyager worm has been all over the news and blogs lately. It's recently undergone an update, which takes it one step closer to becoming every DBAs problem child.
Traditionally enterprises have taken the perspective that security in the database is mainly an issue of protecting the right and wrong internal folks from seeing what they should, and not touching what they shouldn't. But with SQL Injection techniques, websites are turning up hidden information inside of databases formerly thought secure, and DBAs are taking notice.
The worm is just the latest and most ominous face on database security, shining the light on the seriousness of the issue.
To learn more about database security, check AppSecInc, Red Database Security, or my favorite Pete Finnigan's weblog.
Posted by admin at 04:11 AM | Comments (0)
November 02, 2005
Oracle's FREE Database
It seems as incredible to us as anyone I'm sure, but also particularly prescient. We've talked about the intersection of Oracle and Open Source since 2000 when it wasn't the topic of the day. In recent news however, things have changed quite a bit.
First of all Oracle announced in early October it was buying Innobase the company behind a big transactional component of MySQL. And now this week they've also announced their Express Edition of 10g. We confess to not having fully reviewed the Express Edition to see what features are there and so on. But the trend seems clear, and welcome.
Posted by admin at 01:15 AM | Comments (0)
September 28, 2005
Security Oracle with Open Standards
Pete Finnigan hosts an excellent weblog on Oracle and security. He's got a piece discussing a Meet The Experts in which an open standard for securing Oracle is discussed.
Posted by admin at 10:48 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2005
Restoring an Open World
Oracle's Openworld conference this week got started with a big keynote by Charles Phillips. Oracle's push is to reemphasize open standards and Open Source in a big way. The upcoming release of the application server will support IBM's Websphere as well as Open Source Apache, Spring, and Hibernate, underlining their commitment to Open platforms and standards with a hotswappable architecture. Good stuff.
UPDATE: Just got out of Larry's talk this afternoon, and he reiterated the commitment to opening up the middle tier. Compatability with JBoss or Websphere is a dramatic shift, and welcome. But what about the database tier, one attendee asked during Q&A? In all of the aquired products, Peoplesoft, and JD Edwards, for instance, multiple backend databases will continue to be supported. Whether or not various databases will be supported with the eBiz suite is still up in the air. That it's being considered though, again, underlies a generally open stance on these questions. He also maintained that going forward, in five years, SAP as well as the Salesforce.com's of the world will continue to be serious competition.
Posted by admin at 09:35 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2005
Called an Open Challenge?
Dana Blankenhorn has posted an interesting twist on the new Siebel deal. He mentioned the Open source connection, specifically in connection with Oracle's recent hire of Omar Tazi as Open Source Evangelist. He also mentions the threat from Salesforce.com, and application service providers like it.I think a threat in that regard is arguable, as such application service providers inevitably rely on a big database vendor, and Oracle is the perfect fit. However, the connection to industry consolidation is clear. In addition there are other such service providers that offer a one-stop-shop solution for companies that need SAP or Oracle e-Business Suite, and these are often the darlings of the Openworld event. In a related point, I found out about Salesforce.com's AppExchange program which borrows a bit from the Open Source model.
Posted by admin at 03:18 AM | Comments (0)