Commentary: Oracle envisions grand future in China (News.com) [LWN.net]

News.com has a commentary that looks at Oracle's leveraging of Linux in China. "Oracle's database and business applications growth in the United States may no longer be very robust, but in China, the company sees greener fields. Oracle plans to reap those fields with Linux, which has received strong support in China because of that country's distaste for being locked in to Microsoft's proprietary Windows systems."

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Commentary: Oracle envisions grand future in China (News.com)

Posted Jan 15, 2004 0:12 UTC (Thu) by jhardin (guest, #3297) [Link] (3 responses)

> "...that country's distaste for being locked in to Microsoft's proprietary Windows systems."

...but they'll accept being locked into a proprietary DBMS?

Oracle

Posted Jan 15, 2004 0:32 UTC (Thu) by ccyoung (guest, #16340) [Link] (2 responses)

several differences:

SQL is not nearly as closed as something like *.doc
Oracle is much better at standards than others (MS)
You do get the code with Oracle Financials
Oracle databases fill a necessary need in large organizations

I will not argue the fact Oracle likes to make money - they're simply too expensive for my clients. And they're as bad as MS about forcing you into new versions.

Oracle

Posted Jan 15, 2004 0:55 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

So why won't the Chinese allow Oracle to keep working on tuning Linux for being really good at databases, then switch to MySQL everywhere that it makes sense? Oracle still has some technical advantages, but for most jobs it's overkill.

And, of course, just as some governments who aren't really ready to jump to Linux are telling Microsoft otherwise, the Chinese will lean on Oracle to drop prices or be replaced by one of the free SQL databases.

Oracle

Posted Jan 15, 2004 18:41 UTC (Thu) by leandro (guest, #1460) [Link]

> SQL is not nearly as closed as something like *.doc

Indeed not, but Oracle isn't ISO SQL compliant.

> Oracle is much better at standards than others (MS)

Last time I checked, MS SQL Server was more ISO SQL compliant than Oracle.

> You do get the code with Oracle Financials

But it ain't free. And will it run against a truly ISO SQL DBMS such as IBM DB2 or PostgreSQL?

> Oracle databases fill a necessary need in large organizations

IBM DB2 does it better. For smaller organisations, PostgreSQL is free.

Commentary: Oracle envisions grand future in China (News.com)

Posted Jan 15, 2004 13:43 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Oracle will reap what it sows.. and the fields always seem greener in other peoples pastures.. maybe Oracle needs better seed?