Oracle Acceleration with Sun Methods
April 30, 2010
Companies with big investments in Oracle face the same tough choices that bedeviled me when using Sun Microsystems hardware for The Point (Top 5% of the Internet) in 1993. To make Sun stuff go fast, one needed to keep the Sun system pure; that is, only Sun approved goodies were to be used. Each goodie had to be certified, some stringently certified and some less stringently certified. The benefit of following the rules was keeping the warranty and service agreements valid. Get too frisky and one had to pay for the romp in the grass chasing technical butterflies.
Oracle follows the same path. In a world when Google talks about commodity hardware and most developers either embrace or have a pretty solid notion of open source, the Oracle approach seems somewhat out of step.
Or is it?
I know that there are quite a few companies who have been like Speed of Mind in the business of enhancing Oracle’s search performance or like CopperEye are in this business now. There are others, and you can find them by searching for hyperboles or just visiting an enterprise software trade show.
Speeding up Oracle looks like a slam dunk business. The reality is that most of Oracle’s customers want to achieve better performance by keeping within the bright white lines that Oracle puts on its information toll road.
If you have a sluggish Oracle system, you will want to run a query for Oracle accelerators on Google or just navigate to Oracle itself and run a query for the Sun Oracle database machine. The Exadata gizmo is expensive, but most serious Oracle shops will rely on this type of device to get the performance required for today’s petascale applications.
Why?
The answer is that the Oracle DBA knows that one way or another, the Oracle Sun engineers can get the system to work and deliver better performance. The boss will agree because the cost of dealing with service if the warranty or service agreement is invalidated makes the cost savings of non Oracle solutions look like buying a chopped liver sandwich at a deli.
As the hyperbole about NoSQL solutions increases, knocking out Oracle is no easy task. Some vendors have put massive hurt on Oracle. Mark Logic comes to mind as one company that has an uncanny knack of delivering a content solution that just happens to address some Oracle data issues. But other firms have yet to experience Mark Logic type of success.
In short, there are some powerful magnetic forces operating to repel non Oracle solutions. The DBA whose sole job is to baby sit Oracle is just one factor. Sure, Oracle has flaws, but logical arguments may have to get around the potential cost penalties of letting the engineers chase butterflies.
Stephen E Arnold, April 30, 2010
Unsponsored post.
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