SEO

Hi all,


A friend of mine is trying to get a job as a Linux Sysadmin in a
certain company. This company produces document management software.

They have their own "database" maintained by a "consultant" who seems
to have the company bent over a barrel with their trousers around
their ankles (and a tub of vaseline provided by the company).

This "db" that he has written in C/C++ over 18 years is not
documented, and basically my friend's job will be to try and get rid
of their dependency on this db and ultimately on Mr Vaseline.

Apparently this db is *_his_* intellectual property and he made
threatening noises about calling his lawyer if the system was looked
at again by anyone but him (my friend took one look at the code and
said "No way am I trudging through this mess...".

I know more about db's than he does (he's a sharp fellow nonetheless)
and he was asking me about the ins and outs of db's &c.

I gave him a few options (different db's from Open Source ones to
Oracle), his first question was "Which would be best for my c.v." to
which I replied "Oracle". He wants to know about licencing costs, so
what I would like to know is: What sort of discount can one expect on
Oracle as a VAR?


Paul...



p.s. I also suggested that he could send the code to India or
somewhere and pay someone to decipher it - any recommendations for
this (offline please)?

--

plinehan __at__ yahoo __dot__ __com__

XP Pro, SP 2,

Oracle, 9.2.0.1.0 (Enterprise Ed.)
Interbase 6.0.2.0;

When asking database related questions, please give other posters
some clues, like operating system, version of db being used and DDL.
The exact text and/or number of error messages is useful (!= "it didn't work!").
Thanks.

Furthermore, As a courtesy to those who spend
time analyzing and attempting to help, please
do not top post.

Paul wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
>
> A friend of mine is trying to get a job as a Linux Sysadmin in a
> certain company. This company produces document management software.
>
> They have their own "database" maintained by a "consultant" who seems
> to have the company bent over a barrel with their trousers around
> their ankles (and a tub of vaseline provided by the company).
>
> This "db" that he has written in C/C++ over 18 years is not
> documented, and basically my friend's job will be to try and get rid
> of their dependency on this db and ultimately on Mr Vaseline.
>
> Apparently this db is *_his_* intellectual property and he made
> threatening noises about calling his lawyer if the system was looked
> at again by anyone but him (my friend took one look at the code and
> said "No way am I trudging through this mess...".
>
> I know more about db's than he does (he's a sharp fellow nonetheless)
> and he was asking me about the ins and outs of db's &c.
>
> I gave him a few options (different db's from Open Source ones to
> Oracle), his first question was "Which would be best for my c.v." to
> which I replied "Oracle". He wants to know about licencing costs, so
> what I would like to know is: What sort of discount can one expect on
> Oracle as a VAR?
>
>
> Paul...
>
>
>
> p.s. I also suggested that he could send the code to India or
> somewhere and pay someone to decipher it - any recommendations for
> this (offline please)?
>
Dunno... but your friend could download and test as much as he likes
for free - don't do production is all that matters.
Go to otn.oracle.com/download, and go ahead - read the license
carefully, and you'll see what I mean.

Does that answer the other question?
--
Regards,
Frank van Bortel

We produce a commercial product based on Oracle (i.e. are a VAR). As
Frank mentioned, I'm 95% certain that we don't pay any licensing fees
for developing our product against Oracle - in other words, we can set
up Oracle instances in-house that we run against for dev & testing
purposes, but we don't have any of our data in them (obviously, confirm
this with Oracle sales). We do pay for support, however (highly
recommended).

When our customers purchase our product, they also must purchase an
Oracle license. So your friend's client changing their system to
Oracle won't mean more licensing costs for them (there will be other
costs associated with switching technologies, of course), but it will
add to the cost of each unit sold of their product. Even if they're
not selling Oracle with the product, their customer's going to pay for
it, so whether you add $N to the final price or the customer does, the
result is in increase in cost or a decrease in profit.

Keep in mind that selling a "turnkey" product based on Oracle has its
own set of problems. In addition to the licensing costs, you're going
to have some customers that want nothing to do with Oracle - they may
be "100% SQL Server/DB2" shops, etc. You'll have others who have their
own IT & DBA people who want to have ownership of the server or the
backup process (you're going to want them to have some ownership over
backup, even if it means they need to copy the files RMAN produces to
some other location on their network periodically). They may dictate
what kind of hardware you're going to want to run the system on, or may
insist on auditing your database if they think they're really something
special or have an IT department that's looking for something to do.

I'm a big fan of Oracle, but for both political & technical reasons, it
is not always the best solution for software products that have an
"embedded" database. If you don't think you're going to need the high
availability/high reliability features of Oracle (hot backups,
clusters, etc.), or if customers are okay with the idea of losing up to
a day of data in the event of a catastrophic crash and only use the
system during business hours (meaning you can just take a cold backup
of your data files during the evening when the system is offline), you
may want to choose a lighter weight solution. MySQL can be a good
solution for a system that only needs basic SQL functionality and
doesn't require high write performance (in terms of many concurrent
users) - if you have occasional (as in less than 10/minute) writes and
many queries, it's a good choice.

Your friend willl definitely learn a ton working with a system like
Oracle, but make sure you're using the right tool for the customer.

Frank van Bortel <frank.van.bortel@gmail.com> wrote:


>Dunno... but your friend could download and test as much as he likes
>for free - don't do production is all that matters.
>Go to otn.oracle.com/download, and go ahead - read the license
>carefully, and you'll see what I mean.


This is what I told him. You don't have to pay for Oracle unless you
are in production. Which is fine. Just pointed him at the downloads
and he's now messing around with it.


>Does that answer the other question?


Which other question? The one about being a VAR? Does Oracle have this
concept? I know, for example, that Interbase from Borland will give
you substantial reductions on licence fees if you buy licences in
bulk. Same with Oracle?

Or was it the question of farming out the programming somewhere else?



Paul...


--

plinehan __at__ yahoo __dot__ __com__

XP Pro, SP 2,

Oracle, 9.2.0.1.0 (Enterprise Ed.)
Interbase 6.0.2.0;

When asking database related questions, please give other posters
some clues, like operating system, version of db being used and DDL.
The exact text and/or number of error messages is useful (!= "it didn't work!").
Thanks.

Furthermore, As a courtesy to those who spend
time analyzing and attempting to help, please
do not top post.

BigBoote66@hotmail.com wrote:


>When our customers purchase our product, they also must purchase an
>Oracle license. So your friend's client changing their system to
>Oracle won't mean more licensing costs for them (there will be other
>costs associated with switching technologies, of course), but it will
>add to the cost of each unit sold of their product. Even if they're
>not selling Oracle with the product, their customer's going to pay for
>it, so whether you add $N to the final price or the customer does, the
>result is in increase in cost or a decrease in profit.


But, essentially, you are saying that it doesn't matter how many
licences you (as a VAR) "sell", Oracle's going to charge the price
that they charge regardless if you sell 10 systems per annum or 1000?


>Keep in mind that selling a "turnkey" product based on Oracle has its
>own set of problems. In addition to the licensing costs, you're going
>to have some customers that want nothing to do with Oracle - they may
>be "100% SQL Server/DB2" shops, etc.


As I understand it, SQL Server doesn't enter into it, because it's
Linux based product. As for any other DB, I think that they basically
set up the box and add it to the network of the client company, so in
a way, it doesn't really matter if they have used DB2 in the past,
this machine will be running Oracle. I don't think they sell their
system to IT companies, and I don't think it's an issue - I'll double
check with my friend.


> You'll have others who have their
>own IT & DBA people who want to have ownership of the server or the
>backup process (you're going to want them to have some ownership over
>backup, even if it means they need to copy the files RMAN produces to
>some other location on their network periodically).


Again, I don't imagine this to be a problem. As I understand matters
anyway, isn't Oracle very good at keeping base data and schema details
from end users (even customer DBA's), through obfuscation and also
allowing anybody at all to backup and restore, but not actually check
out the structure of the db, or get their hands on any proprietary
data?


> They may dictate
>what kind of hardware you're going to want to run the system on, or may
>insist on auditing your database if they think they're really something
>special or have an IT department that's looking for something to do.


Again, that's a matter I'll have to ask about. Personally though, I'd
be a lot (and I mean a *_lot_* happier knowing my firm's data was on
Oracle than on any proprietary system - I have come to learn to
distrust proprietary systems and the "Oh, we have a guy who can give
you all that functionality...." . Guy changes job/falls under a
bus/becomes a "consultant" and you're screwed, just like this company.


>I'm a big fan of Oracle, but for both political & technical reasons,


Technical I understand, would you care to expand on the "political"
bit?


> it is not always the best solution for software products that have an
>"embedded" database.


Of course not. I did say that I brought my friend through everything
from PostgreSQL, Firebird, MySQL, Interbase, Informix, MS SQL Server
to Oracle. *_Technically_* I think there is no reason that every one
(bar perhaps MySQL) wouldn't work. But, as I pointed out, he also
asked what would look best on his own c.v. and the answer had to be
Oracle.


> If you don't think you're going to need the high
>availability/high reliability features of Oracle (hot backups,
>clusters, etc.),


Don't go for EE, but rather Standard?


> or if customers are okay with the idea of losing up to
>a day of data in the event of a catastrophic crash and only use the
>system during business hours (meaning you can just take a cold backup
>of your data files during the evening when the system is offline), you
>may want to choose a lighter weight solution.


Vide supra.


> MySQL can be a good
>solution for a system that only needs basic SQL functionality and
>doesn't require high write performance (in terms of many concurrent
>users) - if you have occasional (as in less than 10/minute) writes and
>many queries, it's a good choice.


Ditto. And some of the other Open Source db's are great under
heavy(ish) concurrent loads. Stats from an Interbase ng. that I
follow, had an 89 GB db with 200 or so concurrent users and truckloads
of SP's, triggers &c. - I'm quite sure it would more than cope with
their needs.


>Your friend willl definitely learn a ton working with a system like
>Oracle, but make sure you're using the right tool for the customer.


As I said, it's a balancing act between that and what he can get on
his c.v. I don't know this firm's price point, and how much adding an
Oracle licence would be pain-ful or pain-less. They may well turn
around and tell him that there's no way they're going to use Oracle,
so he might again turn to me and I might point him down the road of
PostgreSQL or Firebird or wherever.


Also, a final point of a discussional nature. You (rightly) mentioned
that some places may be "only DB2/MS SQL/Whatever". I have worked for
companies in the past (and I'm not talking about minnows here) who
just use the db as a bit bucket - i.e. their system will work
virtually no matter what db you point it at, but the system makes no
use of triggers, SP's and anything else "vendor specific". I'm also
thinking of saying that to him (this being dependent on a
"translation" of the C/C++ of the original programme and whether much
processing is needed on the db side, or whether it's all done in code,
in which case, they might be able to use the fact that they can point
their system at any db a selling point.

Anyway, thanks for your input.



Paul...


--

plinehan __at__ yahoo __dot__ __com__

XP Pro, SP 2,

Oracle, 9.2.0.1.0 (Enterprise Ed.)
Interbase 6.0.2.0;

When asking database related questions, please give other posters
some clues, like operating system, version of db being used and DDL.
The exact text and/or number of error messages is useful (!= "it didn't work!").
Thanks.

Furthermore, As a courtesy to those who spend
time analyzing and attempting to help, please
do not top post.

> But, essentially, you are saying that it doesn't matter how many licences
> you (as a VAR) "sell", Oracle's going to charge the price that they charge
> regardless if you sell 10 systems per annum or 1000?

That, I can't tell you. We don't sell a huge number of units, so it's
quite possible that Oracle didn't deign to give us a deal. Your
mileage may vary.

> > I'm a big fan of Oracle, but for both political & technical reasons,
> Technical I understand, would you care to expand on the "political" bit?

"Political", meaning, "not technical, but I'm going to give you a hard
time about it any way". I tried to give examples in my previous post,
but basically it just boils down to the fact that Oracle is a large,
well known piece of software with lots of support requirements &
knowledge needed to make it function. Some companies fear this - they
don't want to be "on the hook" to keep an Oracle instance running.
Others might be the opposite - they'll be busybodies who think they
know more about your product than you do because they took some Oracle
tuning classes ("We've been monitoring your system - you're cache hit
ratio should be way higher"), or because they have standards ("All
Oracle instances on our site need to have a schema that follows these
naming conventions"). Most of this stuff is crazy nonsense, but it's a
something you will have to deal with once you start using a well known
entity like Oracle.

You also can't underestimate simple product partisanship. Some places
may have some middle manager who made a big case a few years back why
Database X was better than Oracle in every way, and now that they're
buying your product, suddenly this guy needs to back up his
assertations. Trashing your system before the fact may be easier than
defending his own.

> But, as I pointed out, he also asked what would look best
> on his own c.v. and the answer had to be Oracle.

True.

> Don't go for EE, but rather Standard?

If it makes the per unit price point come in at what you want, and
still does everything you need, then go for it. When I say "high
availability", though, I'm bending the Oracle lexicon a bit - what I
really mean is flexibility &scalability, which even Standard will give
you compared to a product like MySQL. One factor that traditionally
was a hassle for Oracle compared to a lot of others was the huge client
footprint required to connect to it - they pretty much depended on you
using their Oracle Client installation utility on every user's machine
& taking 100MB of space on disk. With 10, there's a much more svelte
client option available ("Instant Client"), which solves this.

> I'm also thinking of saying that to him (this being dependent on a
> "translation" of the C/C++ of the original programme and whether much
> processing is needed on the db side, or whether it's all done in code,
> in which case, they might be able to use the fact that they can point
> their system at any db a selling point.

Yeah, I was thinking of that in your original post - given that their
old system was C/C++ system written by one guy, it's probably not the
most sophisticated thing in terms of features & flexibility. I'm sure
just about any modern rdbms out there would be up to the task of taking
its place.

"Paul" <paulsnewsgroups@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:sgfp919485ji6domhiviqll30fqh0q2kki@4ax.com...
>
>
> Frank van Bortel <frank.van.bortel@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> >Dunno... but your friend could download and test as much as he likes
> >for free - don't do production is all that matters.
> >Go to otn.oracle.com/download, and go ahead - read the license
> >carefully, and you'll see what I mean.
>
>
> This is what I told him. You don't have to pay for Oracle unless you
> are in production. Which is fine. Just pointed him at the downloads
> and he's now messing around with it.
>
>
> >Does that answer the other question?
>
>
> Which other question? The one about being a VAR? Does Oracle have this
> concept? I know, for example, that Interbase from Borland will give
> you substantial reductions on licence fees if you buy licences in
> bulk. Same with Oracle?
>
> Or was it the question of farming out the programming somewhere else?
>
>
>
> Paul...
>
>
> --
>
> plinehan __at__ yahoo __dot__ __com__
>
> XP Pro, SP 2,
>
> Oracle, 9.2.0.1.0 (Enterprise Ed.)
> Interbase 6.0.2.0;
>
> When asking database related questions, please give other posters
> some clues, like operating system, version of db being used and DDL.
> The exact text and/or number of error messages is useful (!= "it didn't
work!").
> Thanks.
>
> Furthermore, As a courtesy to those who spend
> time analyzing and attempting to help, please
> do not top post.

Oracle does have a run time concept for vars. It is a substantial discount.
Contact the Oracle Sales rep.,
Jim