November, 2009

The EU grants Oracle another six days to prepare its case on MySQL

The European Union (EU) has not been making Oracle’s acquisition of Sun an easy one, putting the “acquisition machine” in quite a different situation than it’s used to.

The deal, which has already been approved by the U.S. Department of Justice, came under scrutiny by the EU in September, when European regulators expressed concern over many parts of the takeover, especially Oracle’s pending ownership of Sun’s MySQL open source database.

Then, earlier this month, the European Commission (EC) released a Formal Statement of Objections against the deal.  The EC said that Oracle has not yet shown evidence that the deal does not violate European laws regulating unfair competition. Oracle responded with its own statement, which included that the acquisition “does not threaten to reduce competition in the slightest, including the database market,” and the EC’s concerns about MySQL show that they do not understand the idea of open source.

Now, however, it looks like European regulators are giving Oracle something they want — or are they?

Oracle has asked for more time to develop its argument against the EC’s concerns, and the EC announced today that it would extend the deadline of its antitrust review of the deal from Jan. 19 to Jan. 27.

But is an extra six working days really enough time?

That remains to be seen, but it does look like European regulators aren’t the only ones working against Oracle. For example, Florian Mueller, coordinating opposition to Oracle’s purchase of Sun Microsystems and MySQL, sent a note today applauding the news that the EU granted Oracle a delay - but for a different reason than Oracle may have.

“If the EU’s objections were baseless, Oracle wouldn’t need more time now to develop its arguments. The best way Oracle can make use of this extra week is to think really hard about selling MySQL to a suitable third party,” he wrote.

Is there any chance that the EU will approve the deal with so many objections? We’ll now have to wait an extra six days to find out.

The IOUG takes a swipe at the European Commission

As tension builds in the standoff between Oracle and the European Commission (EC) over Oracle’s proposed ownership of MySQL, Redwood Shores has picked up the support of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG).

This is hardly a stunning development, although Chairman Ellison may find some comfort in knowing he has the backing of 20,000 database administrators, developers, architects, technical managers as he continues on his crusade.

Late last week the IOUG released a letter opposing the EC’s Statement of Objection, in which the EC made clear - again — what would happen to European users’ freedom of choice if Oracle controlled both its own dominant proprietary database and MySQL.

In the IOUG letter president Ian Abramson tried to make the case that by owning MySQL, Oracle would actually increase competition in the database market instead of limiting it. As evidence he pointed to Oracle’s staunch support of open standards along with how it has treated several open source technologies it has acquired over the past decade.

“Consistently, Oracle has demonstrated its intention to define standard approaches that are open to all, and the acquisition of MySQL is expected to be no different,” Abramson wrote. “Oracle has shown it is a company that supports open standards. We anticipate that Oracle will continue to foster innovation and openness with MySQL following the acquisition and not hinder competition.”

Underlining his point about how well Oracle is capable of working and playing well with others in the open source world, he cites several acquisitions the company has made and how well those technologies have done since including TimesTen, Berkeley DB and Hyperion’s Essbase.

Abramson added that should Oracle decide to “deviate” from this pattern of behavior of the way it has treated the technologies it has acquired, it is his belief the market would be quick to drive a whole new set of viable competitors into the open source world.

In the latest go round involving the EC’s Statement Of Objection to the Oracle-Sun deal, Ellison and the EC’s Neelie Kroes slapped each other around pretty good. Ellison gave the EC a backhander saying its objections were based on a “profound misunderstanding of how open source worked, and Kroes countered with a sharp left hook labeling Ellison’s criticism as “facile and superficial.”

Why is this battle over a free piece of software, which represents such a small part of the overall $7.4 billion deal growing increasingly contentious? Some good answers were given in a New York Times story that points out this case is helping surface the very different views of open source software.

First open source software is much more economically important to Europeans than it is to Americans. In the story Michael Cusumano, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management says the trans-Atlantic “megawar” makes sense in that “the Europeans come to the defense of open-source companies because the big proprietary companies are nearly all American.”

The story goes on to say European governments have looked at open source software as a “potential tool of economic development and independence.” For instance, according to the story, several major European countries actively encourage local and central governments to consider products like MySQL and Linux over proprietary platform such as Oracle databases and Microsoft’s Windows.

The EC is clearly considering what this decision might mean to the overall health of some European economies. It appears to be a much more important consideration to the EC than it was to the U.S. Department of Justice who approved the deal with not too much muss and fuss months ago.

So this battle could serve to resolve a much larger issue than what havoc Oracle might wreak among its competitors with a free database. It continues to be a crime that Sun employees lose their jobs as these two haggle over what this solution should be? If it goes badly for Oracle at the scheduled Nov. 25 meeting with the EC, and the latter formally blocks the deal by the Jan. 19 deadline, and if Oracle decides to take the EC through a protracted trial, there won’t enough of Sun left to make this worth Oracle’s while.

Oracle takes the My out of My Oracle Support

The topic of support has often been a sore subject for Oracle customers. In the past couple of years we’ve seen Oracle support services get mixed reviews and consultants recommend third-party support for unhappy users.

There have been, however, glimpses of hope. Last year, Oracle received high marks for support in a survey from the UK Oracle Users Group (UKOUG). The software giant also announced the release of My Oracle Support, a new next-generation user support portal to replace Metalink, at last year’s Oracle OpenWorld.  And just last week, Oracle upgraded My Oracle Support and officially retired the Classic Metalink allowing even more users to switch over to the new portal.

But it looks like that’s where the good news ends.

Users are calling the new user support portal a fiasco, according to a ComputerWorld article by Chris Kanaracus this week. Complaints from customers about “severe problems” in My Oracle Support include a Flash interface that’s often not compatible, unhelpful tech support and the inability to simply log into the portal.

How has Oracle responded to the complaints?

The vendor has not yet provided a status update. In a blog post Monday, Oracle’s Chris Warticki emphasized that Metalink could no longer be used.  “Please register. Change is here. Get in front of this one…seriously,” Warticki wrote about My Oracle Support.

As of Wednesday afternoon 39 users, most of whom could not log in, had commented on the post, writing complaints including:

“This is an unmitigated disaster. MOS is not working for our company. It is not working for DBAs at two other companies I have asked, either. When I get through to support by phone, they tell me that they can’t help me because they can’t use the new system either.”

“Why, with all of Oracle’s software acquisitions, holdings, and developers, was Oracle unable to create a new support site with Oracle software?… If Uncle Larry hears of this fiasco, it sure seems that heads will roll, but hey, at least the interface (that always freezes) is pretty to look at.”

“I am really curious why Oracle thinks anyone wants flash on what is supposed to be a support site? I just want my sr’s resolved in a timely manner, and usable information. Right now we have neither.”

Warticki responded to the comments a few times, apologizing for the frustration and saying that Oracle would fix the issues: “Our apologies for any inconvenience as Support works out any ‘glitches’. Hang on. Remain on hold. We’ll be right with you,” he wrote in his latest comment

But is this just an issue that needs a few days to sort out, or is the future of Oracle support doomed?

Bad week for Larry

Not the best of weeks for Team Oracle in or out of the water.

First came reports late Tuesday that the European Commission (EC) was nearing a decision to issue an official statement of objection over Oracle’s proposed bid to acquire Sun Microsystems. Issuing such a statement is largely considered the first step toward blocking the 47.4 billion deal.

As has been reported here and elsewhere over the past couple of months, the focus on the EC’s two-month long investigation continues to be on Oracle gaining possession of Sun’s MySQL, the market leading open source database. EC officials believe Oracle’s control over both the leading proprietary database and the leading open source database would significantly limit the buying choices of European users.

The EC reportedly is seriously considering issuing a statement of objection because Oracle has failed to get back to the organization with evidence that the proposed deal would not cripple competition after several requests.

The EC has not blocked mergers of this magnitude very often, but Larry seems to be testing their patience. No word yet whether Larry and his right hand woman, Safra Catz are on a plane heading to Brussels to better explain themselves.

The second bummer for Team Oracle this week is the 200-foot mast on the company’s gigantic trimaran, which is expected to represent the US the America’s Cup, snapped and came crashing down while sailing out in the Pacific ocean. The gigantic craft had to be towed back to its berth. Estimated cost of the boken mast, a whopping $10 million.

Is this an omen of some news that could be coming out of Brussels

Toad for Oracle: A consultant’s tale

We’ve been talking to you a lot recently about the new Toad for Oracle 10, including a sneak peak of the new version, a look at Toad 10’s best new features and a podcast on how to get the most out of the Oracle database tool.

In the podcast, Toad for Oracle product manager John Pocknell discusses many benefits of Toad for Oracle 10, such as its ability to greatly speed up routine tasks, how the tool appeals to a wide range of Oracle users and its capabilities compared to those of SQL Developer.

But what do the users think?

I recently spoke with John Weathington, President and CEO of Excellent Management Systems, about his experiences using Toad in his management consultancy. Weathington helps companies with a variety of management issues, such as the need to increase efficiencies and optimize organizational performance.

But Weathington is no stranger to Toad. He began using the database tool when it was free, well before it was acquired by Quest Software, Inc.  in 1998. He has seen Toad evolve from his time as an Oracle database consultant using the pre-Quest Toad to using Toad for Oracle 10 today in his management consultancy. He credits the tool for helping him “shine” at his job.

How? For one, Weathington, who mainly uses the Toad Development Suite, highlighted speed and efficiency as major benefits to using Toad as a consultant.  He discussed one project in which an organization was going through a major compliance effort and he had to mine its database. With Toad, he was able to profile the database and extract information very quickly, something that was critical to the success of the high pressure, multi-million dollar project.

In another situation, he had to perform a transformation load for a data warehouse. The load was taking approximately two hours to run and had to be performed somewhere between 50 to 100 times, Weathington said. But by using Toad’s SQL Optimizer, Weathington was able to cut the two hour load down to about two minutes.

Some of Weathington’s other favorite Toad features, including those in Toad for Oracle 10, are:

• Toad 10’s new ER Diagramming Tool: Weathington says he uses this tool almost every day and thinks the idea of taking an ER diagramming paradigm to explore your database is “very innovative.”
• Benchmark Factory: Being able to predict how your database will perform after scaling a small database to a 500-user production database is very important, Weathington said.
• Quest Code Tester: Weathington thinks this automated PL/SQL code testing tool is undervalued and overlooked in the market. Since the importance of testing in general is often overlooked, it’s an important tool to have, he said.

As far as cost is concerned Weathington said it doesn’t matter: what you’d pay for new developers is far more than what you would pay to make your existing ones two to three times more productive with Toad. Over the course of his career Weathington said he’s never had a reason to embrace another tool. But what about you? We would like to hear from you about your experiences using Toad or other database developer tools and how they have or haven’t helped you perform better at your job.