Oracle to buy Sun Microsystems..

[chris webster]

Well, as an Oracle developer trying to learn Java, I reckon this is probably good news for me at least!

Oracle already has a substantial investment in Java technologies, so let's hope that spending $billions on Sun will encourage them to do even more with Java. Also, unlike Microsoft with C# and .NET, Oracle doesn't have any alternative technology of its own to compete with Java and JEE, so buying Sun and Java cannot just be about eliminating competition (as it surely would have been if Microsoft had bought Sun). In any case, some of Oracle's other developer tools e.g. Forms/Reports are looking pretty tired these days, despite being ported onto J2EE several years ago, so maybe we can look forward to better GUI and development tools from Oracle with Sun's input (I'm still not convinced by Oracle's JDeveloper and ADF combination).

On the other hand, as people have been saying, MySQL looks quite vulnerable. Oracle already has a "free" database product - Oracle Express Edition (XE) - which can be used in a lot of places where people currently use MySQL, although as a proprietary product the licence conditions for XE obviously much stricter than for MySQL. But MySQL is still open-source with developer contributions from the community, and the free edition has a massive installed user-base. Oracle might think twice about alienating such a huge section of the IT community, because those people might be buying proprietary databases too one day.

I wonder if Oracle will continue to promote or develop Sun's paid-for Enterprise version of MySQL? On the one hand, it might appear to be a competitor for Oracle's own RDBMS, so why should they keep it going? On the other hand, Oracle's expensive enterprise RDBMS products don't entirely address this mid-market niche, so perhaps Enterprise MySQL might be a useful addition to their DB portofolio.

One option might be to push Enterprise MySQL towards greater Oracle compatibility e.g. as EnterpriseDB has already done with its paid-for version of PostgreSQL.

Incidentally, somebody asked about PostgreSQL earlier. From what I've seen, the free PostgreSQL is a significantly more robust and scalable enterprise DB platform than the free version of MySQL. It is certainly used for serious large scale applications by many corporate and government users including massive specialised spatial data applications using the PostGIS add-on.

Interestingly, at least one ex-MySQL developer - Peter Eisentraut - seems to think the Oracle Sun purchase might actually be good news for PostgreSQL, as it will leave PG as the obvious non-proprietary alternative to Oracle/SQL Server.

Anyway, these are definitely interesting times for the Java and database communities!

[Brian Legg]

Am I the only one who thinks Oracle bought Sun for the sole reason of keeping it from IBM? What do they plan to do with Sun's failing server market? As far as I know Oracle is a software company only.

[Giriraj Bhojak]

Oracle is a software and services based company.
They would now start selling a complete suite of product that includes Solaris + Weblogic + Oracle DBMS which would compete against IBM's websphere + DB2 strategy.
What is bothering is the quest that what would happen to Java and the likes of OpenOffice and MySql.
This ought to remain free and one can only hope that Oracle continues to invest heavily in Research and Development of this core technologies.
An independent Sun would have made more sense but pity their bureaucracy.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Why the worry about OpenOffice? I don't know of a competing product for the cost/market share. And it's not like Oracle has their own office suite.

[Michael Tolenruc]

Kengkaj Sathianpantarit wrote:

Akash Raje wrote:How will this affect certification exams ?

Oracle doesn't have similar certifications, I think there shouldn't be any affect to the existing Sun Java Certifications excepts their name are likely to be changed from Sun Certified XXX to Oracle Certified XXX.

In case of BEA Certification you can take a look at this link: http://blogs.oracle.com/certification/2008/12/bea_certification_integration.html

Nice link! as a follow up question for all of the guys, how about the people who already acquired/holding certification from Sun? Can we consider our certifications as Oracle certified even though we got it when still SUN owns the java?

Thanks!

[Vikram Kohli]

chris webster wrote:(I'm still not convinced by Oracle's JDeveloper and ADF combination).

Agree that there can be better IDE then Jdeveloper.As its slower, requires at least 2GB of RAM to run properly. But as of ADF, may I know what in there that doesn't convince you?I have heard many forms/reports developer have same point of view as you. I think its a pretty good RAD development framework to work with.

[chris webster]

Vikram Kohli wrote:[Agree that there can be better IDE then Jdeveloper.As its slower, requires at least 2GB of RAM to run properly. But as of ADF, may I know what in there that doesn't convince you?I have heard many forms/reports developer have same point of view as you. I think its a pretty good RAD development framework to work with.

Hi Vikram,

Yes, you're right - my main problem is with JDeveloper, especially after using Eclipse for the last year or so. A fully functional ADF plugin for Eclipse would be interesting, so maybe Oracle can use some of those smart Sun Java guys to help them out with this. But I know some people are wary of ADF because of the risk of Oracle changing the terms of deployment licences (as they did with BC4J). By comparison, Spring/Hibernate etc are free, widely used and very well documented, which may be one reason why a lot of people prefer to go that route for their Oracle Java developments.

[chris webster]

Giriraj Bhojak wrote:
What is bothering is the quest that what would happen to Java and the likes of OpenOffice and MySql.
This ought to remain free and one can only hope that Oracle continues to invest heavily in Research and Development of this core technologies.

I wonder if Oracle could kill these two open-source projects off, even if it wanted to? Does anybody know of any major open-source projects that have been taken back under proprietary control? It would seem to be more trouble than it's worth for Oracle to try this.

OpenOffice is available under the LGPL, which (as I understand it) allows you to use it for free and to modify it for free so long as you provide your changes free under the LGPL to other people as well. So Oracle would have to change the terms under which it provides OpenOffice i.e. revoke the LGPL, then somehow chase millions of existing users - like all those people who bought low-memory netbooks thinking they could still run OO on them - to make sure they accept the new licence, in the meantime raising the kind of global public stink that only Microsoft would normally dare to create for themselves.

If Oracle doesn't want to bother maintaining OpenOffice (even thought they've just acquired the Sun team that does this anyway), it would be far easier just to release it as a fully independent open-source project and let somebody else worry about it.

Deciding what to do with MySQL might be more difficult, although it might fill some empty niches in Oracle's own offerings, provided they can find a way to make money out of it while not alienating hordes of happy open-source MySQL users. But I'm sure Oracle's lawyers have thought about this already!

[Hong Anderson]

Michael Tolenruc wrote:

Kengkaj Sathianpantarit wrote:

Akash Raje wrote:How will this affect certification exams ?

Oracle doesn't have similar certifications, I think there shouldn't be any affect to the existing Sun Java Certifications excepts their name are likely to be changed from Sun Certified XXX to Oracle Certified XXX.

In case of BEA Certification you can take a look at this link: http://blogs.oracle.com/certification/2008/12/bea_certification_integration.html

Nice link! as a follow up question for all of the guys, how about the people who already acquired/holding certification from Sun? Can we consider our certifications as Oracle certified even though we got it when still SUN owns the java?

Thanks!

I'm not sure, but I don't think that does matter much. People who already acquired certification from Sun were certified by Sun already, even in the near future there will be no Sun Microsystems anymore "Sun Certified XXX" still are valid.

It's like if in future somebody asks what company invented Java? The answer still is Sun Microsystems, not Oracle.

[Arka Guhathakurta]

hi ranchers,
from what I get to know is that JAVA still LIVES and that's good to hear... for those ppl who are switching to C#. Don't forget 70% of it is stolen from JAVA the rest from C++ , and other languages thus either way you depend on JAVA!
Lets spare each languages to itself rather than comparing each other. BOTTOM LINE is JAVA continues to dominate....
hahaha

[Rusty Shackleford]

The good thing is that if Oracle screws around too much with Java and MySQL, forks can happen. I am doubtful Java would fork, but I will not be surprised if a solid mySQL fork happens before the end of summer.

[Julio Cesar Marques]

And there is nobody talking about NetBeans IDE. Will be it replaced by JDeveloper?

[Hong Anderson]

Julio Cesar Marques wrote:And there is nobody talking about NetBeans IDE. Will be it replaced by JDeveloper?

I think so. There is no point for Oracle to support NetBeans, it doesn't make income. Actually, I don't understand Sun develops NetBeans for what, for fun, for promote Java, or something else.

[Julio Cesar Marques]

I don't know too... I liked for fun option

[Glen Cai]

No body said any thing about the effects to Adobe. Flex is still the leader of RIA, not JavaFx.

[Vijay Bhuruk]

The five biggest changes out of Sun/Oracle
http://blogs.computerworld.com/the_five_biggest_changes_out_of_sun_oracle

[kurt hanni]

So will SCJP now become OCJP

[Jan Cumps]

Pat Farrell wrote:I see this as bad news. Not so much for Java, but for MySql. I'm biased, I dislike Oracle's corporate style, or rather their lack of ethics.

MySql is a credible competitor to Oracle's DB. Not as good, doesn't scale as well, but solid and much cheaper. I don't see how Oracle will put the effort into improving MySql to make it a better product that is even closer in abilities to Oracle's DB.

But, its a fact, no point in worrying about it. Deal is done.

I respectfully differ in opinion. I find that Oracle does respect customers, communities and (wrong word, but can't find anything better) spirit of companies they acquired.

[Poorna Yapa]

Can someone please tell me what will happen to our java certifications after oracle bought sun? Will we able to do SCBCD,SCMAD,SCEA in future or will they change?

Is it good or bad for us?

Poorna Yapa
SCJP 1.4

[Pat Farrell]

Julio Cesar Marques wrote:And there is nobody talking about NetBeans IDE.

Its dead, Jim. Sun pulled most of their development engineers off before the IBM/Cisco/Oracle merger talks started. It will live on as a community project, but I expect that too few folks will bother to contribute. Sun put a lot of money into NetBeans.

I liked it better than Eclipse, but its just an IDE, not that big a deal.

[Frankey James]

Good thing I got on the C#/Silverlight wagon well over a year ago. I think Java will be as fine as it is right now. JavaFX will probably die, though.

What will they call LAMP in job descriptions now? LAP? or LAOP?

[Frankey James]

Kengkaj Sathianpantarit wrote:

Michael Tolenruc wrote:

Kengkaj Sathianpantarit wrote:

Akash Raje wrote:How will this affect certification exams ?

Oracle doesn't have similar certifications, I think there shouldn't be any affect to the existing Sun Java Certifications excepts their name are likely to be changed from Sun Certified XXX to Oracle Certified XXX.

In case of BEA Certification you can take a look at this link: http://blogs.oracle.com/certification/2008/12/bea_certification_integration.html

Nice link! as a follow up question for all of the guys, how about the people who already acquired/holding certification from Sun? Can we consider our certifications as Oracle certified even though we got it when still SUN owns the java?

Thanks!

I'm not sure, but I don't think that does matter much. People who already acquired certification from Sun were certified by Sun already, even in the near future there will be no Sun Microsystems anymore "Sun Certified XXX" still are valid.

It's like if in future somebody asks what company invented Java? The answer still is Sun Microsystems, not Oracle.

It might matter for companies that need oracle certified workers to keep some sort of relationsihp with Oracle. Cisco expires their certifications every 3 years. If a company is Oracle certified and has to keep X amount of workers on their staff to keep their special relationship, then it might matter. oracle surely grandfather in existing Sun certified individuals. So our papers will really show their age in a couple years.

[Frankey James]

Pat Farrell wrote:

Julio Cesar Marques wrote:And there is nobody talking about NetBeans IDE.

Its dead, Jim. Sun pulled most of their development engineers off before the IBM/Cisco/Oracle merger talks started. It will live on as a community project, but I expect that too few folks will bother to contribute. Sun put a lot of money into NetBeans.

I liked it better than Eclipse, but its just an IDE, not that big a deal.

This is truly sad. I think netbeans was awesome. I also don't like Eclipse. Gross.... I never even heard of JDeveloper by Oracle. What a disaster this is....


What will happen to Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates (my favorite IT-book authors)? I hope they can get on with Oracle and continue the Java education thing for them.

[jeff mutonho]

I'd booked to do part 1 of SCEA at the end of May . Should I wait now to hear what Oracle plans to do with certification?
What would you do?

Thanks

[Ulf Dittmer]

jeff mutonho wrote:Should I wait now to hear what Oracle plans to do with certification?

The fact that it says "Sun" on the certificate is irrelevant (as it would be if it said "Oracle"). It's a certificate of Java proficiency, and Java is not going away any time soon.

[chris webster]

Frankey James wrote:
What will they call LAMP in job descriptions now? LAP? or LAOP?

How about LAPP for "Linux-Apache-PostgreSQL-PHP"?

[Pat Farrell]

chris webster wrote:How about LAPP for "Linux-Apache-PostgreSQL-PHP"?

I think Linux-Apache-MagicRDBMS-[php|perl|python]

[Hong Anderson]

Ulf Dittmer wrote:

jeff mutonho wrote:Should I wait now to hear what Oracle plans to do with certification?

The fact that it says "Sun" on the certificate is irrelevant (as it would be if it said "Oracle"). It's a certificate of Java proficiency, and Java is not going away any time soon.

It might not simple like that. Oracle might change some certifications' objectives as they did with BEA SOA certification.
I think that is sort of thing jeff concerns, not just certifications' name.

But I doubt that will happen soon for Sun Java certifications. No worry too much for now, wait about 6 months to see what will happen.
Oracle has much more things to do, not just Sun Java certification programs.

[Vyas Sanzgiri]

I never think Sun was a competitor to Oracle. Both have different tech stack. As said earlier, may be Oracle is looking to keep Sun from IBM.

The only thing I can now think of is we need to pay more $. I have dealt with multiple Oracle products in the past and the $ we have to pay for the setup and support is far more than investing in a open source solution. Oracle is the only $ rich company left in the universe and if the but out works then it would be a monopoly.

[Joe San]

Kengkaj Sathianpantarit wrote:Oracle also has Berkeley DB, I think JavaDB will not be supported anymore.

It's better Oracle does not support MySQL or any JavaDB which will be much better for us. No need to learn additional stuff that are mush similiar with minor differences.

[Joe San]

Kengkaj Sathianpantarit wrote:

Julio Cesar Marques wrote:And there is nobody talking about NetBeans IDE. Will be it replaced by JDeveloper?

I think so. There is no point for Oracle to support NetBeans, it doesn't make income. Actually, I don't understand Sun develops NetBeans for what, for fun, for promote Java, or something else.

And what would happen to the new netBeans certification from SUN?

[Hong Anderson]

Jothi Shankar Kumar wrote:

Kengkaj Sathianpantarit wrote:

Julio Cesar Marques wrote:And there is nobody talking about NetBeans IDE. Will be it replaced by JDeveloper?

I think so. There is no point for Oracle to support NetBeans, it doesn't make income. Actually, I don't understand Sun develops NetBeans for what, for fun, for promote Java, or something else.

And what would happen to the new netBeans certification from SUN?

If Oracle wouldn't support NetBeans (which I think it would happen), this certification would be useless in near future, if nobody (or just few people) uses NetBeans, what is the point to be NetBeans certified?
And Oracle would retire this certification.

[harilal ithikkat]

Oracle can reap what Sun sowed

[aditee sharma]

Certifications apart, I am thinking about the various frameworks (Spring, Hibernate, iBATIS) and their respective communities.
If Oracle stops giving Java for free, then how will these communities survive, and how will businesses that use these frameworks develop anything new in Java?

[chris webster]

aditee sharma wrote:Certifications apart, I am thinking about the various frameworks (Spring, Hibernate, iBATIS) and their respective communities.
If Oracle stops giving Java for free, then how will these communities survive, and how will businesses that use these frameworks develop anything new in Java?

Well, they're dependent on the JVM, not on Sun/Oracle. Not sure how much of the Java language definition and the JVM is actually controlled by Oracle/Sun now e.g. the OpenJDK project has already made parts of the JDK open source. Anybody else know?

But if Oracle did try to lock down the Sun JVM, they might find somebody else develops an alternative to capture the enormous existing Java market instead.

[Paul Sturrock]

If Oracle wouldn't support NetBeans (which I think it would happen), this certification would be useless in near future, if nobody (or just few people) uses NetBeans, what is the point to be NetBeans certified?

Do many people bother to do certification in an IDE? And if so, why?

[Jesper de Jong]

It would be sad if Oracle would not spend any effort on Netbeans, because it's a very good IDE, on some points a lot better than Eclipse.

In episode 246 of The Java Posse there's a long discussion about the Oracle buying Sun.

aditee sharma wrote:If Oracle stops giving Java for free, then ...

That's not going to happen.

[Hong Anderson]

Paul Sturrock wrote:
Do many people bother to do certification in an IDE? And if so, why?

I don't know, actually I got confused when I heard Sun is going to issue an IDE certification.

[Hong Anderson]

Jesper Young wrote:It would be sad if Oracle would not spend any effort on Netbeans, because it's a very good IDE, on some points a lot better than Eclipse.

The problem is it's only "a very good IDE", it's unlike Eclipse, Eclipse is a platform, not just IDE, IBM can generate much income from their Eclipse-based products.
I don't understand Sun invested in NetBeans for what, I mean Sun is a business company they should think about income.

Oracle might continue to develop NetBeans, but in that case I think that NetBeans wouldn't be free anymore, it may free only for community edition.

[Arvind Mahendra]

Paul Sturrock wrote:

If Oracle wouldn't support NetBeans (which I think it would happen), this certification would be useless in near future, if nobody (or just few people) uses NetBeans, what is the point to be NetBeans certified?

Do many people bother to do certification in an IDE? And if so, why?

I'm wondering this why myself. I didn't think there was a cert for an IDE but I find it kinda funny someone would do a cert in that.I don't think I would ever do one if I was paid to take it.