Oracle & Itanium

[Jan van den Ende]

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

[Robert Brooks_1]

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

[John Gillings]

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

[Shriniketan Bhagwat]

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

[Ian Miller.]

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.

[Hoff]

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.

[Shael Richmond]

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.

[Ian Miller.]

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

[Raperswil]

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.

[P Muralidhar Kini]

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

[labadie_1]

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...

[Ian Miller.]

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.

[Bill Pedersen · Accepted solution]

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.

[Ian Miller.]

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.

[labadie_1]

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 ?

[Ian Miller.]

Oracle DBMS is Oracle Database is it not?

in which case 11gr2 is the last version on Itainium

[Hoff]

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.

[Hein van den Heuvel]

>> 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

[Hein van den Heuvel]

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

[P Muralidhar Kini]

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

[Jeremy Begg]

It's not clear to me from the various statements whether OpenVMS Alpha is being lumped in with OpenVMS Itanium or not. In other words, will Oracle continue to port new versions of their major products to OpenVMS at all?

Contuniing Alpha while discontinuing Itanium would only make sense if they had lots of Alpha customers (and very few Itanium customers).

Jeremy Begg

[Martin Vorlaender]

Jeremy,

Oracle had announced before that 10gR2 would be the final release for OpenVMS Alpha, see e.g. http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/226#comment-1861

cu,
Martin

[Ian Miller.]

A pointer to the message from Kevin Duffy on the JCC email list server

http://www.jcc.com/search/rdblistserver/current/4d61ec9c.htm

[Mike Kier]

I hadn't thought about the impact to CDD. We use it fairly extensively via the Fortran Dictionary statement and for TDMS/DECforms and even a little Datatrieve.

We don't currently use any Oracle database products on VMS although we were evaluating the possibility of using 10g as a bridge to our Unix environments which use Oracle.

We're currently using a non-SQL-based db product with a lot of host language calls using that vendor's language (bordering on several thousand routines).

We've been looking at upgrading from 7.3-2 to 8.3 or 8.4 on Alpha preparatory to beginning an Itanium migration, but I suspect upper management will take an even longer "wait and see" position and re-raise the re-platform issue once again.

[John McL]

A June 9 report from TechEye.net says that HP has gone legal over Oracle's proposed withdrawal.

Also an earlier (24 March) report about Oracle, HP and Integrity, see http://www.techeye.net/chips/very-unseemly-row-breaks-out-over-intel-itanium

Both reports came from Mike Magee, whose accuracy has sometimes been questioned (e.g. progress when VMS ported). He does however regard VMS quite favourable, saying in the second of the above "...the very robust OpenVMS ..."

Just thought you might like to know.