During Sunday’s Partner Event keynote, Larry Ellison said,”I think it’s enormously exciting that we can take this great company Sun and combine it with another great company Oracle and then merge those technologies and maybe do things neither company would be able to do by themselves.  That’s our goal, to tackle problems even bigger, to integrate hardware and software, and deliver revolutionary systems.”

Monday Oracle President Safra Catz said: “That it turns out that us and all the other software vendors, were all sending you little pieces of technology all these years, and it was at your site that you had to make it all work together.  And what we thought was that this really didn’t make sense.  That long-term, companies like us had to take more and more of the responsibility of bringing you systems that work together.”  She continued, “But many of you know there’s a reason we call this Oracle Open World, because we are just slavishly devoted to open standards.  And if you want some of the pieces and some from others, that’s ok.  We’re going to make that possible.  But our hope is that little by little, you take many of the pieces from us.”

Yet it appears to me that Oracle has already started stepping away from openness, in the very moment when its hardware partners, OS partners, and customers rather need to be reassured as to Oracle’s commitment to a somewhat level playing field moving forward.  I submit as evidence the “Database Smart Flash Cache” feature new in 11g R2.

11.2 New Features E10881-03 October 2009, p. 1-27: “New in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2), the Database Smart Flash Cache feature is a transparent extension of the database buffer cache using solid state device (SSD) technology. The SSD acts as a Level 2 cache to the (Level 1) SGA. Database Smart Flash Cache can greatly improve the performance of Oracle databases by reducing the amount of disk I/O at a much lower cost than adding an equivalent amount of RAM."

Sounds pretty good.  But get this restriction in the 11.2 Concepts Guide part # E10713-04 October 2009 p. 14-9) “Note: Database Smart Flash Cache is available only in Solaris and Oracle Enterprise Linux.”  The 11.2 Admin Guide (part # E10595-06 October 2009 p. 6-21) says Database Smart Flash Cache is only supported on the Solaris or Oracle Enterprise Linux operating systems.  This is confirmed by 11.2 Release Notes for Linux (part # E10838-03 October 2009 p. 2) and 11.2 Database Release Notes -03 p. 9.  11.2 Database Licensing Information (p. 1-4) says Database Smart Flash Cache is Enterprise Edition only and Solaris and Oracle Enterprise Linux only.  The 11.2 Reference (E10820-03 October 2009 p. 1-49, 1-50) says nothing about OS restrictions on either of the new db_flash_cache_file and db_flash_cache_size parameters.

What technical justification could Oracle have to not make this feature available or not support it in the HP-UX, AIX, or Windows ports for example, let alone the Red Hat and SuSe Linux distributions?  I’m feeling the need to reevaluate my enthusiasm for Oracle Enterprise Linux, for the first time since its announcement in 2006.

Mr. Ellison said, “There are some advantages of the single organization having control of the engineering of the hardware also engineering the software and engineering all the pieces to fit together well.”

It would appear that Oracle is already taking initiatives with respect to the Sun/Oracle announcement that give me pause.  If we’re already seeing what may be a competition-motivated lock-out of a key feature like database smart flash cache today, what kinds of additional lock-outs may be coming once the hardware and DB software are subjected to co-engineering?  I am not in favor of Oracle’s Sun acquisition.
 

Mr. Ellison continued in his Sunday keynote, “We are not selling the hardware business, no part of the hardware business are we selling.  And we think Sparc is a fantastic technology, and with a little more investment it could be even better.  You know the CMT line is fantastically innovate, and we think again by adding to the already spectacularly good engineering team we have around Sparc, we can increase our rate of innovation.  Make the chip even more reliable while consuming less power.  Make the chip even faster while consuming less power.  So we intend to invest in Sparc.”

I’ve been dazzled by how elegantly Oracle has integrated opened new business lines beginning with the Oracle Application Server curve back at the turn of the decade.  I had my doubts Oracle was going to make it with an app server, but they proved it to me, technically as well as with actual market share.  Oracle has consistently impressed me with their integration of acquired companies both organizationally and technically.  I’ve wondered since the Oracle/Sun announcement if Oracle was finally in over their head by attempting to get into hardware.  This week I’m swayed over to believe that Oracle can probably pull off the integration and management of Sun’s hardware lines.  Larry Ellison’s in charge and he’s a remarkably impressive visionary, strategist and tactician.

Mr. Ellison continued, “Solaris is unquestionably the number one enterprise operating system in the world in terms of linear scalability, in terms of reliability, in terms of features and functions.  It is the leading operating system running the Oracle database.  But it’s just the leading enterprise operating system period.”

Mr. Ellison continued, “And we’re very proud to be working with Sun to make sure that all the Oracle software runs better on Solaris, more reliably on Solaris, and faster on Solaris than it’s ever run before, and it runs faster there than it runs any place.”

So what are Oracle’s intentions with respect to Linux?  I think Chris Josephes sheds useful light on the issue, especially as it relates to Oracle’s 2005 declaration of Solaris 10 as the preferred development platform for these 64 bit platforms: UltraSparc, AMD-64, and Intel-64. 

Mr. Ellison continued, “We’re going to spend more, not less on MySQL.  We think it’s a fantastic piece of technology, it’s extremely popular, it’s an open source product, and we’re going to increase our rate of contribution to that product.”

On Wednesday, Scott McNealy said: “The one I hear a lot about is MySQL.  Open Source.  Well, what’s going to happen?  This is the volume, open source, low end database out there in the marketplace.  Is it going to get clobbered?  Well, I don’t think so.  And again Larry has said, “It doesn’t compete with the Oracle database,” which is true, this competes with Microsoft.”  Mr. McNealy put up a slide with this text: “’MySQL and Oracle don’t compete at all,’ said Mr. Ellison adding that he would not sell MySQL.  Financial Times, 22 September 2009”.

So what about the whole engineering effort behind Oracle 10g with one of the prominent objectives being that it would compete with SQL Server’s relative ease of installation and operations?  At the time we were led to understand that the single CD 20 minute 10g Database install and the improved manageability of 10g Database, was in part a response to Oracle’s concern about the hemorrhage of customers jumping ship for SQL Server.  What about Oracle’s open admission in the fall of 2005 that Oracle Express was a direct answer to SQL Server 2005 Express?  If MySQL and Oracle don’t compete at all, then one would have to talk themselves into the new concept that SQL Server and Oracle don’t compete at all.  A MySQL customer today doesn’t have the obvious technical upgrade path to paid Oracle versions compared to an Oracle Express customer.  What then could Oracle’s financial/business interest in continuing to promote MySQL?  I’d like to hear an answer to that question, rather than Oracle continuing to attempt to convince us that they’re going to support and contribute to MySQL simply because they say they will.  The existence of the Oracle employee assigned to MySQL documentation, that I met at Tuesday evening’s bloggers’ meeting, did more to convince me of the prospects of Oracle’s on-going support for MySQL, than all of these executive statements combined.

On Wednesday during his Exadata II comments, Mr. Ellison said, “The important thing here I think is our belief that eventually the virtual machine, the VM, and the operating system have to work exceptionally well together.  That means they have to be engineered together.”

With respect to the last sentence, I’m afraid I’m not similarly disposed.   VMware and the guest operating systems weren’t engineered together, although current versions were most definitely engineered with awareness of each other.  On the other hand, this seems like a huge forward looking statement on Oracle’s part, and one that I believe sets up a straw man to fill market demand that doesn’t today exist.  On Thursday while leaving the conference, I had an epiphany about my full-time experience in VMware’s OOW pavilion: not one person asked me about Oracle Virtual Machine or even mentioned it.

Oracle has somehow managed to stay out of USA Today and the Wall Street Journal so far this week, according to what I have noticed.  Expect that to change today with Larry Ellison’s keynote, assisted on-stage by California Gov Schwarzenegger.

I’m intrigued by Oracle’s Golden Gate acquisition announcement.  Golden Gate specializes in real time decision support data integration.  Look for Golden Gate to play well with Oracle’s strategic business intelligence acquisitions of Siebel and Hyperion business intelligence acquisitions.  These compliment Oracle’s tenured Data Warehouse Builder and OLAP—already tightly integrated with the database.

Major changes in the Oracle Partner program announced on Sunday.  Oracle’s acquisitions have outgrown the existing partner framework.  The partner program now allows and encourages specialization.  Among the changes is the separation (at least for partners) of decoupling certification from Oracle University training.  The Exadata Storage servers and Sun Oracle Database hardware are available for re-sale by Oracle Partners as of December 1.  I thank Ray Wang for his excellent recap of the Sunday announcements.

After hanging with VMware’s Chris Rimer (owns the Oracle relationship world-wide) and even speaking with him around the country, I finally get it on the Oracle-on-VMware “certification” issue.  Oracle doesn’t certify below the OS.  VMware is hardware to the Oracle red stack, because it’s below the OS.  With respect to Oracle’s VMware support clause that Oracle may ask a customer to assist replicating the bug on physical hardware, that makes Oracle’s VMware support policy no different than Oracle’s policy with HP or other hardware vendors.  This is consistent with Wim Coekaert’s response in Sunday’s partner Oracle Virtual Machine meeting to a guy asking a one-off question about VMware support.  Wim is reported to have said that Oracle’s no different than most other ISV’s with respect to that policy.  This is an appropriate time for me to remind that to-date Oracle support has never asked any HoB Oracle VMware customer to replicate any problem on native hardware.

I ran into Tim Gorman at last night’s Bloggers’ meeting.  We flew Tim into Omaha a few years ago to keynote at Solid Foundations.  Tim is on HoB’s very short list of Oracle business intelligence specialists to call.  He’s also an Oak Table member.  I also enjoyed chatting with John, a ten-year Oracle employee who blogs independently of Oracle’s blog site, and who works on Oracle’s MySQL documentation project.
 

I’ve enjoyed the steady stream of HoB customers and associates who have been stopping by the VMware pavilion.  It feels like a high school reunion.  Nebraska Workers’ Compensation Court’s Randy Cecrle observes that the exhibit floor is substantially shifted from previous years.  He’s not finding the third party content/document management, IDE or BPM vendors out there.  Much fewer development tool vendors.  He says he checked the program guide to make sure he wasn’t overlooking them.

I’ll be taking a look at what’s new in OVM 2.2, announced this week.

The best break-out session recommendation that I’ve heard yet from Oppenheimer Fund’s Roger Rose.  Monday Steve Shaw’s session S312645: “Oracle Database Performance on Linux: Tips, Tools, and Tuning for Intel Platforms.”  This included the option to disable the Linux background process that can slow down the clock for power consumption.  It also included changing the NUMA memory setting/interleave from 6K to 2M.

Look for my comprehensive review of the show’s keynotes tomorrow. 

This show’s down to about 35K attendees, compared to 45K two years ago.  Oracle’s cutting back; no third year of the mega LCD screens with Oracle ads on either end of Howard St.

Surprising trend: In day one of my VMware Pavilion volunteer work, I got asked as many questions about the mechanics of running RAC on VMware, as I did any other Oracle-on-VMware topic.

From Sunday’s Oracle/Sun talk: I noticed Larry Ellison’s defense of TPC fining Oracle a whopping $10K for making a comparative IBM performance claim based on numbers that Oracle hadn’t yet published.  In my opinion, Mr. Ellison seems to be saying in so many words that the end justified the means and they made the decision fully anticipating the $10K fine.

I’ll no doubt say more about Oracle’s Sun acquisition later.  Out of all of the Sun issues, I probably the most curious about what Oracle will do with Sun’s MySQL business line.  Six years ago, we used to laugh at this little database that had no stored procedures and didn’t even have commit/rollback.  We stopped laughing at MySQL a few years ago.  Now it’s one of our business lines.  I keep reminding myself that if Oracle were to attempt to scuttle or ignore (same thing) MySQL with intent to reduce competition for the Oracle database, that someone out there would no doubt take the open source remnants and keep it alive.  I just scanned two sheets that I picked up today at the Sun pavilion.  The first sheet describes each of their 23 demo stations.  The second lists the ~50 Sun-related sessions at the show.  Not a word in either about MySQL.  That's a disappointment.

 
News today that caught my eye since we do a lot with E-Business Suite shops: datango claims reduction of Oracle application rollout and support costs by over 40%.

HP targeted Oracle Apps shops today, announcing a series of new provisioning templates for BladeSystem Matrix users.  I'd like to see a vendor step forward with Oracle Apps VMware virtual machine templates.