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Technology Stocks : Oracle Corporation (ORCL) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brian Moore who wrote (8602)	10/7/1998 2:05:00 PM
From: Hardly B. Solipsist	Respond to of 19080

I bet that most web sites use Apache and Linux/FreeBSD/etc., and Perl/TCL. I think that it's probably nearly impossible to get reliable information about "most web sites", and if you are looking for the lowest cost for you company, I think that you will probably go for "free". I know people at Amazon, and well before they had 20 people they were using Oracle, but then they weren't assuming that they would always be a 20-person company. Of course this press release is biased (they'd surely fire the person that sent out one that isn't), but I think that it has some merit. It would be more convincing to me if it were the top 1000 sites, but I don't know if the volumes fall off so fast it doesn't make sense, or if MSFT won that comparison, of if they just can't get the data.

To: Brian Moore who wrote (8602)	10/7/1998 3:41:00 PM
From: Michael Olin	Respond to of 19080

I would not be surprised if Microsoft end-to-end has a lower initial cost, but that depends on how they license for "unlimited" access over the internet. Oracle's ads are trumpeting that most large e-commerce sites use Oracle. Of course, the definition of "use Oracle" is pretty generous. Some use Oracle as a back end database only. Others use Oracle's web server and database, and so on. The question is: What do you intend to do with this web site? If you are looking for the cheapest way to go, you can get everything pretty much for free using Linux, Apache, and one of the freeware Linux SQL databases. If the initial outlay for software is going to drive your decision, you have to accept the limitations of the software you purchase. You run the risk of developing a Microsoft based site (as Egghead.com did) and then finding out that you have to start all over again when you need to scale it. For the most scalable solution, Oracle is probably a better, although more expensive bet. I think that there will be a backlash a few years down the road when people who chose a Microsoft product based on price find out that they got what they paid for. -Michael