Oracle is obsolete?

Oracle transferred from Mark Rittman's blog
Http://www.rittman.net/archives/001130.html

is Oracle A Legacy Technology?
One of the nice things about working and the Oracle RDBMS, compared to say working with technologies such as as/400, COBO L or mainframes is that it's generally perceived as a "hot" technology. Salary surveys show Oracle skills as being one of the most In-demand skill-sets, the Oracle database is way ahead of the C Ompetition in terms of features and with new technology, and most of the world's top companies use Oracle as their datab ASE of choice. But What if in fact we ' ve gone past the peak of Oracle ' s ascendancy, and it's now a legacy product, with all work in futur E being mainly about maintaining systems in place, and migrating them to newer, more fashionable systems? A couple of excellent recent articles by Mogens Nørgaard raised the as a possibility, and certainly give you a few things To the technology stack of Oracle database consider.

The ' the ' Mogens ' chapter in Oracle insights:tales the ' oaktable, where he looks at the key Factor that makes Oracle particularly suited to effective tuning-the fact this database kernel is heavily instrument Ed (the famous "Wait Interface"), and because of that, you can obtain precise details about exactly what are slowing down Y Our application. Other databases, such as DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server, don ' t have this instrumentation (or at least it's not publicly acce Ssible) and therefore it's much more "hit and miss" with those platforms.

A point that Mogens makes mid-way through the article though are that, whilst it's all and good instrumenting the data Base, in most cases a application consists of a Sans, operating system, an application server, application code and so on, And if you have only got feedback in how the "database is performing", you ' ve only got part of the story. Mogens makes the good point that, whilst Microsoft Haven ' t exposed SQL Server's internals in the same way of that Oracle have , in fact they ' ve got a historical chance to instrument the entire application-platform, as they own the technology behind Windows Server, IIS,. NET and,, a point made again by Niall Litchfield into a thread on comp.databases.oracle.server.

Where this goes in to though was that, whilst it's fantastic what Oracle ' s done with instrumenting the database kernel, WHA T Mogens is actually finding the database operating systems it, like disk storage and before is now becoming a commodity, with No-one this getting fired for buying Microsoft SQL Server, and many organisations Looking to open source databases such as MySQL to handle their day-to-day database needs. Whilst this are moving databases as a whole into the legacy category, it particularly hurts Oracle badly as firstly, the Or Acle Rbdms is expensive and still to this day requires a level of administrative skill down above SQL Server and MySQL, an D Secondly, for Oracle, database revenues are still majority of their of total license revenues. According to the article,

Oracle and DB2 are now legacy databases:very few truly new sales compared to license renewals and add-on sales to Existi Ng customers, very few young people coming out of schools wanting to badly about learn. SQL Server is the safe choice so won ' t get you fired, and the open source databases such as MySQL would prevail when they Can deliver the neccessary (rather few, basic) functionalities that developers of tomorrow would require (such as hand Ling transactions correctly, have good backup methods, and so on). "

The irony as far as Mogens is concerned, was that ' whenever a system or technology reaches a level of ' perfection (in Words, science are used as rule) it'll be replaced by something more chaotic this looks (and perhaps even is) cheaper ", Something that happened to mainframes before and, just in the point where it reaches the level of "technical perfection", Could possibly be the fate of the Oracle RDBMS itself.

Mogens made the same points again in the autumn of Oracle edition, and, Scene about the thinking R point about databases by being made into a commodity, says that this'll have the following effect on database Professionals:

"So the DBAs are slowly being replaced, outsourced, diverted to other tasks, or being asked to focus on the other things, too." That's means three things for our database world:

1. The databases would usually run, because nobody is fiddling with parameters and other stuff.

2. No new features would be tested and implemented (after all, 7.3 are still plenty of database technology for most).

3. When things finally go wrong, a lot's other complications, due to the lack of the daily nursing, fiddling, and caring, wil L is discovered, making the troubleshooting and restore/recovery process even harder in a even more critical.

It means something else, too:for companies specialising in this sort of scenario, with a bunch of techies still around O can stay current with the latest without forgetting the (basics of) past, there'll be lots to work for the next 10 Years. "

Whilst for Oracle in particular, the effects are likely-involve a change in business

"... I am The IT ' s fairly safe to say the Today:
Oracle and DB2 are legacy databases, you don ' t get fired currently from choosing SQL Server, and the open source databases Would become the default as soon as they ' re good enough, which'll happen real soon now, since more and more work takes P Lace outside the database, turning the database into a data dump. The open source databases to the database market what Linux is currently busy doing in the O/S market. Oracle gets most of its license profits from the database. If they don ' t find additional sources of income (and profit), such as PeopleSoft, they'll fail because of the constant a Ttack on their profit sanctuaries (the database licences and Support). Oracle'll is bought by IBM or HP if they don ' t manage to grow to a comparable size. "
So what does this mean to us then, whose careers (presumably) are based around our knowledge of Oracle? Ok I'm I'm I'm I I'm safe to say that, whilst I ' m in total agreement with Mogens on his assessment market Tunately always picks cheapest and simplest above complexity) I ' m costly everyone sure would that Oracle agree MS isn ' t going anywhere in the near future. If you are spoke to Tom Kyte (or indeed Mogens) you are could point to any number of new features, so make Oracle more powerful, Easier to administer and less costly to run, and no doubt when databases such as SQL Server and MySQL get the features tha T Oracle currently has, they ' ll be just as complex to administer.

However, time and time again now I come across situations where the database are considered just part of the underlying PLA Tform and all of the real activity takes place on the mid-tier and the application, and if you ' ve going to did that, MI Ght as-use MySQL or Access. Also (and this are particularly pronounced in the BI and OLAP world, and would be, and would be) rival Databa Ses are catching up with Oracle in terms of features, and in most cases have a better ' out of the box ' experience that doe SN ' t scare off curious first-time users of the database.

I am like "any" Walk of life, it pays to hedge your bets, and if you speak to most advocates of Oracle Technology (inc Luding Many of the oaktable members) They also have a good understanding to rival RDBMSs, and in some cases recommend In preference to Oracle. Also, it depends where you are in your career-i ' m/working with Oracle more or less to all of my it career, a nd in all probability would continue to work with databases for the rest of the I time in the industry. If, however, I is just starting out, I'm probably focus is more on Java or. NET application coding, look more at "mid-tier" Issues and spend less time on the database, storage and the operating system. Still, having said that, I still come across as/400-based applications, and consultants who still make a packet looking AF ter these supposed "legacy" systems, and don ' t have-spend all their time recertifying and getting their heads around Co Ncepts such as "Grid computing" and "service-orientated ArchitecTures ", so it could just pay to sit it out and let everyone else fight it out over the next new great thing.