Tuesday - April 21, 2009

Oracle to buy Sun.  Everybody Panic!

Oracle's announcement of intent to buy Sun reads like the offer that Sun could not refuse.  Not a particularly good offer, but one that met some threshold of the board of directors.  Sigh.

One opinion I got was "I bet in a year you can read MyISAM and InnoDB with your Oracle RDBM".

Perhaps.  Oracle is already a hideous beast with too many features, and an incomprehensibly complex install.  I know DBA's who capitalize on the incomprehensibility, making that complexity into their unique service offering.  I don't see the value-add in wallowing in the complexity.  Many companies see hellish complexity as a valid cost of doing business.

I think the more likely course is that Oracle tries to graft junk into MySQL.

Horrible scenario 1 -- Oracle adds their Tablespace and pseudo-file-system into MySQL.  This makes MySQL a kind of "guest" RDBMS in Oracle's overall management framework.  You can use Oracle's file-system to manage large XML files and large MySQL files.  While superficially fun for backups, it leads to a kind of lock-in making it impossible to dislodge either in favor of a simple, faster solution (e.g., Postgres.)

Horrible scenario 2 -- Oracle adds a Java engine into MySQL to create a kind of stored procedure facility where MySQL manages the class files and can execute Java methods "inside" the database.  Everybody starts claiming that this is faster.  In the same way that folks claim (falsely) that PL/SQL is faster than Java.

Horrible scenario 3 -- Oracle buries MySQL or Java under layers of weird disclosures and contractual language that makes it less appealing than a "simpler" contract with Microsoft.  The SCO Strategy (sue everybody) may emerge from attempts to "protect" Oracle's investment in MySQL and Java.

Horrible scenario 4 -- Oracle forks Java or MySQL.  They create an Oracle-Java vs. a Community Java.  Or, they create an Oracle-MySQL vs. a community MySQL.  The community versions are left intact; the Oracle versions become incompatible Chimeric monsters with ridiculous scenario one features grafted into them.

Unless Oracle has somehow jumped out of their proprietary software world-view, I think this news is not good.

Author: Steven Lott
Technorati Tags: Oracle Sun MySQL Java
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