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

To: syborg who wrote (8868)	11/17/1998 1:15:00 PM
From: Lizzie Tudor	Respond to of 19080

syborg, Im a little out of my league as an apps person but why does Oracle without an OS sound so terrible? The fact is, SQL is used as a extended file system more or less by almost all apps shops that I know of. I have stored all kinds of textual information (non db data) in Oracle just for ease of viewing and inclusion in the dbms backup/recovery procedure. IMO all software application packages should try to employ a model like the database application packages anyway, were for example all raw data is stored in text files or some easily readable format and the apps simply format the underlying data vs. the alternative of specific data formats for each document. Sounds to me like that kind of thing is what Larry is talking about. Doesnt anybody remember when they first looked at databases how much like an operating system they were with block buffering etc. - that was a surprise to me anyway. Michelle

To: syborg who wrote (8868)	11/17/1998 1:36:00 PM
From: Punko	Respond to of 19080

How many of history's great visionaries have been called insane by their peers, themselves very smart, credible people? When he first came out with the concept of Network Computing, Ellison was universally ridiculed. Now look what's happening. Companies are running their multi-billion dollar operations using free web browsers, and if they wanted to ditch their PCs in favor of simple Browser-only appliances, there's a lot less preventing them from doing so now than there was a year ago. And as each year passes, and bandwidth improves; and technologies such as Oracle8i further facilitate server-side apps and data management; and Java becomes faster, richer, more stable, etc....the reasons to keep a mainframe with gigs upon gigs of local storage on your desktop will become more and more questionable. No, Ellison's very much together. He's demonstrating (again) the boldness that only genuine visionaries dare. And don't count out the NC. Its time just hasn't come yet. But it will. It's only a matter of time.

To: syborg who wrote (8868)	11/17/1998 1:45:00 PM
From: Michael Olin	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 19080

Look beyond the "No OS" hype to see what OS functions are really needed. Larry is talking about what I'll call, for lack of a better term "database machines". It is not unlike the plug and play disk storage devices that are being sold. Plug it into your network, point a browser at it to configure it and you're ready to go. For a "database machine", why do I need the overhead of an operating system that manages print queues, file sharing, user accounts, sound cards, microphones, and so on. I just need it to run my database. A stripped down OS kernel that provides basic services such as memory management, process switching, network communications and disk I/O will probably give me everything I need. Let the mid-sized database server become a commodity item. If it runs Oracle8i reliably, who cares if NT, Unix, whatever is underneath the covers. Size it, plug it in, and go... -Michael