topic Re: Oracle & Itanium in Operating System - OpenVMS

Oracle & Itanium

Jan van den Ende — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 18:02:38 GMT

See

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/346696

No mention of it, but does anyone have any info how this impacts Rdb and DBMS (and of course native Oracle?

I am not optimistic here...

Proost.

Have one on me.

jpe

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Robert Brooks_1 — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 22:46:11 GMT

Here is an HP response.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-23/hp-calls-oracle-s-itanium-move-a-shameless-gambit-to-hamper-competition.html

-- Rob

Re: Oracle & Itanium

John Gillings — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 01:06:27 GMT

Interesting! Maybe Oracle could sell Rdb back to HP? ;-)

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Shriniketan Bhagwat — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 05:28:57 GMT

Hi,

Below are few related links on the same topic.

http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/03/23/chip-shot-intel-reaffirms-commitment-to-itanium
http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Data-Central/HP-comment-on-Oracle-support-for-Itanium-Processors/ba-p/89675
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110323c.html?mtxs=rss-corp-news

Regards,
Ketan

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Ian Miller. — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 12:34:40 GMT

See

http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Mission-Critical-Computing-Blog/Customers-Rest-Assured-HP-amp-Intel-are-Committed-to-Long-Future/ba-p/89673

and

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110323c.html

I've not seen anything specifically for RDB yet.

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Hoff — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 13:56:43 GMT

If we can take a pause from the PR kerfuffle and briefly return to what passes for customer reality, can we discuss what happens here going forward?

In the near term, obviously nothing needs to happen and nothing needs to change. Oracle software support for existing environments remains available, and the existing Itanium boxes work now and will for some years ahead, and new Itanium boxes are presently available. Status quo.

What has changed is the future availability of new versions of Oracle products.

Which means that we now have a mid- or longer-term choice of a migration off of OpenVMS or HP-UX to another operating system with Oracle database support, or of an on-platform migration from the Oracle products to a different database (and what are the options?), or reconfiguring our existing environments and applications to use a served (remote) database, or some combination of these.

None of these are particularly good choices.

Further information on the application options and alternatives will almost certainly be (or is?) available from Oracle, and y'all (HP) do presently have an opportunity to provide your input and your suggestions and your product alternatives, as well as input and suggestion from your (HP) partners. This window won't remain open indefinitely, as responses are being formulated and decisions are presently being made.

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Shael Richmond — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 14:47:13 GMT

Following Hoff's lead....

Both Oracle RDBMS and the RDB products are covered by lifetime support. That should give us up to 8 years of support with patches. That time will be a bit less probably because I believe the initial 5 years starts as of the product release. After that support will be there just no new patches.

In our case, it would be easy to move our Oracle RDBMS server to another platform - just costly but our application could run happily on VMS. However since we use Codasyl DBMS(RDB) as our production database our options aren't too good. We can take the risk after the patch period is over or leave VMS.

As a company we have already made inquiries to Oracle and yet to hear a response. The best of the bad situation would be that RDB continues on but Oracle RDBMS stops.

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Ian Miller. — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:59:22 GMT

HP's information portal for its response to the Oracle announcement is at:
http://www.hp.com/go/customersfirst

According to the Oracle web site RDB 7.2 will be supported to at least 2016

You can write to Oracle with your opinion

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Raperswil — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 02:50:08 GMT

Unbelievable move by Oracle. I wish they'd leave RDB alone and let it continue on VMS.

The sites I have worked have already begun migrating away from VMS to Solaris/Linux for Oracle Server DBs. VMS did not receive much love from Oracle for the Oracle Server DB.

RDB/VMS: it'll be good opportunity to migrate applications too, not just the DBs.

I wonder though, why HP didn't go the route of Oracle/MS/IBM and buy up enterprise software.

Re: Oracle & Itanium

P Muralidhar Kini — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 12:29:52 GMT

Hi,

Some more links -
http://ai-soft.com/uncategorized/oracle-vs-hp-the-sniping-continues/
http://www.rttnews.com/Content/BreakingNews.aspx?Id=1582378

The battle is certainly on between HP and Oracle. Interesting to read previous posts, to know the actions taken by customers based on this move by Oracle.

Just wondering what could be the next move (and by whom) :)

Regards,
Murali

Re: Oracle & Itanium

labadie_1 — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 20:55:24 GMT

Some big companies could announce they port some databases to VMS.

For example, suppose HP decides to help Ingres port the latest version of their database to Alpha or Itanium.
Or suppose IBM decides to port PostgreSQL to VMS Alpha and Itanium.

This would suppose the top management is bright...

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Ian Miller. — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:54:55 GMT

INGRE 9.2 is already available on OpenVMS Alpha and I64.

There is a report of the current Ingres 10 being built on current VMS.

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Bill Pedersen — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 02:04:02 GMT

I have a build of Ingres 10.1, Community Version, on OpenVMS I64 V8.4. It seems to work without issue. It took a while to get the build environment to work but it does run and SQL executes against the DB via JDBC - since am working in that environment.

I have a VMSINSTAL kit available if there is interest.

Bill.

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Ian Miller. — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 08:51:06 GMT

Oracle have released some details

www.oracle.com/itanium

11gR2 11.2.0.3 is the last planned DB release for HP-UX on Itanium, and 10gR2 10.2.0.5 is the last planned DB release for OVMS, Windows and Linux on Itanium. For RDB last release is RDB 7.3 for Itanium.

If this is not want you want then do let Oracle know. They need your business.

Re: Oracle & Itanium

labadie_1 — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:12:32 GMT

Ian

I do not see Oracle DBMS in the list at
http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/features/itanium-346707.html?origref=http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/346696

Is it discontinued ?

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Ian Miller. — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:07:49 GMT

Oracle DBMS is Oracle Database is it not?

in which case 11gr2 is the last version on Itainium

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Hoff — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:23:11 GMT

If you open up porting to a different database as an option, then (at the scale that most organizations tend to use Oracle) porting to another platform (with or without Oracle) is usually also an option.

Digging out and dusting off and adjusting all of the database-specific accretions(1) that are implemented within legacy databases can be a big project in any database migration.

And that's before you look at both the supporting tools, and whatever odd extensions to SQL might be in use within the environment, or at the tools and compilers involved around any embedded SQL usage.

And given typical license and support prices, the environments with the "low hanging fruit" and with the "easy stuff" have often already been ported.

I've had some platform ports that were easier than some database ports.

YMMV, of course.

--

(1): por ejemplo, stored procedures, triggers and rules and key constraints, and the whole rest of the zoo that tends to silently breed within modern databases.

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Hein van den Heuvel — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:29:19 GMT

>> Oracle DBMS is Oracle Database is it not?

No, that surely is meant to be a reference to the Oracle CODASYL DBMS which is closely tied to RDB. It is listed as a 'related' product.
It currently has the same released version number 7.2.4 and as such might not need an explicit mention.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/rdb/index-086844.html

>> For me the most worrysome mention so far is the suggestion that Oracle-Oracle 10.2 would be the last version, not 11.

As Norm also suggests in C.O.V, RDB 7.3 can be seen as good news. That _is_ a news version with perhaps many more sub-versions to come as proper customer support might require that.
In a conversations over a billiards game with some RDB engineer last Friday that is the current, optimistic, thinking. Yeah they are worried. They may become innocent victims caught in the crossfire.

Let's just wait for the dust to settle some.

fwiw,
Hein

Re: Oracle & Itanium

Hein van den Heuvel — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 01:53:24 GMT

Kevin Duffy, RDB manager @ Oracle send out a clear, and positive, RDB update earlier this evening to the oraclerdb@jcc.com mailing list.

It seems to match my earlier understanding of the situation.
With respect to the RDBMS question it talks about the RDB family being: "Oracle Rdb, Oracle CODASYL DBMS, Oracle CDD/Repository, Oracle SQL/Services,... and more"

Unfortunately it also confirms Oracle-Oracle 10.2.5 as a final release on OpenVMS, not 11gR2. Bummer.

I have attached a simple text version of that messagge.

Hein

Re: Oracle & Itanium

P Muralidhar Kini — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 02:34:16 GMT

Some interesting comparison -

* Compare: Ingres vs Oracle
http://database-management-systems.findthebest.com/compare/18-36/Ingres-vs-Oracle

* Comparison of relational database management systems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_relational_database_management_systems

Regards,
Murali