Oracle and Community Involvement

Dammit, I'm going to have to start writing about Oracle again! Even worse, it's not technical but (cough) opinion and analysis

I saw Justin Kestelyn's blog last week and my immediate reaction was slightly sympathetic, but I decided to sit back for a few days and watch the fun develop, particularly as I'm spinning a few plates this week.

To save you some time, here are a few more links.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=4947

http://www.accmanpro.com/2007/04/30/attention-starved-oracle/

http://www.nbrightside.com/blog/2007/04/30/attention-all-oracle-bloggers/

http://scobleizer.com/2007/04/26/oracle-cant-get-blogging-respect/

http://scobleizer.com/2007/04/27/note-to-oracle-not-me/


Full disclaimer first. This will never be an Oracle Apps, SAP or Salesforce blog. I've spent over 15 years avoiding being an Apps DBA, apart from the occasional enforced spell and the prospect of fiddling around with customisations chills my heart. Therefore, I have absolutely nothing to say about SAP or their online presence.

One lesson Oracle could learn, though, is how to make CRM software cool. I must be getting old but when I hear people getting excited about Web 2.0 solutions to help businesses sell T-shirts more efficiently I have to wonder what got these people involved in IT in the first place. Better CRM software, is that the best they can do? Aren't they just trying to be the next software giant and will they really be any different to Oracle once they are?

On one of Justin's points ...

There appears to be the perception out there that either this community does not exist, or that if it does exist, it must be "centrally controlled" by some evil PR mastermind - and neither assertion is even remotely accurate.

I can't comment on Oracle's internal blogging model, but I have zero contact with Oracle (although apparently that's a problem, which I'll come back to in a minute) so they exercise no control over what I say and have never tried to influence it. I can't make that claim for others, of course, and they might try one day for all I know.

What might add some more interesting fuel to the debate is that I once tried to encourage more Oracle people to blog and the single reply was completely negative! Why? He's a coder and he felt blogging was just a distraction

So maybe Oracle should have a close relationship with external bloggers? Eh? Once Oracle start inviting bloggers to private press briefings are we sure that the result will be a feedback loop, leading to improved products? If so, I'm all for it. However, I can't help thinking that a formal blogger relations program has a hint of, ummmm, bribery about it? Maybe I'm being harsh, but the world is full of largely uncritical writers enjoying their travel expenses and free drinks whilst raving about how release blah-point-blah will change the business landscape or perfume X will change your life.

(I suppose there was a brief moment the other night when I was wearing my Oracle ACE fleece and ordering The Boys to bring my tea to me on a silver tray when I considered praising Fusion, but then I forgot.)

Frankly I'd question anything Oracle give me for nothing and it worries me that others seem to place such a high value on a software vendor's invitations. Of course, I'm keen on attending Open World, could use a nice holiday and attend some presentations but I really don't see why Oracle should have a particular conversation with me because I've got a naturally active mouth, rather than speaking to their big customers. Unless, of course, they're keen to keep people "on message"? God, I'll be getting an invitation to tea with Tony Blair next (and he'd get an even less positive response).

Mmmm, the more I think about it, isn't what I'm doing here much more to do with 'community' than any formal blogger relations program?

What don't I like about Oracle in my personal dealings with them? Erm, well if they made the 10g 'automatic' tuning features part of the base product, I'd probably settle for that and feel I'd performed a genuine community service. Really, it's a little embarassing to offer XML and Java in a database for nothing, but not the best server monitoring tools.

I'm always conscious of being in a bit of a minority, though. I have to rack my brains for the times I curse Oracle. I hear it all the time from people I work beside and those in the community who I respect, but I've just never had those strong negative feelings myself. Bugs? Patches? Security Updates? Are you *sure* other companies are so much worse at addressing these? I struggle to see it personally, although it's fair to say that you pay pretty handsome support fees for the privilege!

It's also true that I'm not in the software purchasing role, so price isn't a factor for me personally. If it was, I'm sure I'd be more of a MySQL fan.

What do I like? Well, when I listen to the excitement reverberating from the recent MySQL conference (a colleague just returned and I know a couple of other guys who attended), I can't help thinking, god, if you guys knew what Oracle could do, I wonder how excited you'd be? (In fact, some of them do and when I say, so how does it compare to Oracle, they all agree, 'oh, it's miles behind, but it's getting there!'. Bizarre.)

That goes to the crux of this issue. Oracle aren't cool but, frankly, I don't care. What I care about is that they make a hell of a database server and when someone comes along and shows me one that's much better, I'll say 'wow, cool' and start blogging about that instead. Maybe it's the software that counts? Anything else is just noise.

Yeah, I'm a dinosaur