Is the Union of Oracle and Endeca Merit the Hype?

January 3, 2012

The question of what to do with unstructured and semi-structured data rises to the surface again and again. Oracles’ answer to the almost mystical question is to add Endeca MDEX into the soup pot. The article, Oracle: Endeca Inside?, on Ovum’s website gives a lengthy explanation of how the new combo of Oracle and Endeca MDEX will take the world by storm – well, the unstructured and semi-structured world at least.

While the assertions in the article are quite impressive we’d like to see some proof of their existence. Much is said about how Oracle really doesn’t need Endeca but will benefit from it nonetheless. The article justifies the addition of Endeca MDEX by saying,

MDEX adds an important capability to Oracle’s analytic portfolio. It allows Oracle to target business users and provide data exploration and lightweight analysis on semi-structured data. However, it also goes against Oracle’s overarching strategy of maintaining one database for almost all kinds of analytic workloads. Over the medium term, Ovum therefore welcomes MDEX being absorbed into core Oracle technologies and offered as a piece of its larger ‘engineered systems’ strategy.

Although reluctant we do agree with the overall concept that Ovum introduces about how MDEX’s absorption into the Oracle machine is probably not a bad idea, we still wrestle with the bigger question: Is performance an issue which can be resolved with Oracle hardware?

Our view is that Ovum may have only part of the puzzle in hand. Oracle and Endeca may not be a two dimensional set up.

Catherine Lamsfuss, January 3, 2012

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.