AWR Licensing

I thought I'd wait for a few days to see how the open letter to Larry Ellison on the subject of AWR licencing panned out.

I love AWR, ASH and I even have an increasing, slightly grudging and cynical respect for ADDM. In fact, I'm in the course of putting together a two-hour training/technical mind-share session on their use at my current site because I have the joy of using them! Nothing would make me happier (in the Oracle technical arena) than for Oracle to include these features in the standard Enterprise licence so I support the letter and hats off to Mark Brinsmead for adding to Niall's (and others) earlier work. But it would be boring for me to just join the band-wagon and repeat what's already been said, so let me focus on some minor areas of difference.

1) The implication in Mark's blog is that adoption levels are almost zero, but that's not my experience. Of the last three companies I've worked with in the past three years, two of them have Diagnostics Pack licences and the other was Pythian. So, whilst Pythian's many customers might not pay for Diagnostics, the UK enterprises I've come across recently do - in fact that's a 100% adoption rate . Of course, it's wrapped up in a site licence, but maybe that's what this is really about? A negotiating tool when dealing with big customers. Suffice to say that adoption is not nearly zero, although it may be among the active blogging and forum communities.

2) I agree with Howard Rogers' assertion that Standard Edition customers should be allowed to licence the Diagnostics pack if they wish. In fact, Howard's written very perceptively about this over the course of the past year or so, if I recall correctly? However, if I had to make the choice personally, my stronger feeling is that this should be included in Enterprise Edition. If the product is truly an Enterprise product, then AWR is far more significant than any SOA/XML/Java/AQ blah, blah, blah feature. What do Oracle think that Enterprise DBAs *do*? Don't they think this stuff is central to our role?

3) In the end, I wouldn't mind so much if Oracle didn't give away so much software for free - SQL Developer and the rest. To restrict access to the workload repository just makes people suspicious - for what? It just makes the company look small-minded. When the licence restrictions become the target for humour - the law is an ass - it's time to reconsider.

I hope those minor differences don't detract from the central argument because I do worry that, the more fragmented the argument, the less likely it is to be won. I even accept the argument might be too emotional but never under-estimate the emotions of a bunch of geeks Wow, think about that! People who are emotional about your product, made up of a stream of hex! Of course Oracle can decide to charge whatever they want for whatever features their customers want and then let the customers decide. However, think about what a positive message a change in stance would send to their customers. I don't pretend to know how much money this might cost Oracle in the long run but the warm, fuzzy glow would resonate around the Oracle community and make die-hard fans be able to sing their praises of the product without having to be embarassed about what I still believe to be a licensing anomaly.

Here's the thing, Larry. Wouldn't it be nice to be the good guy for once?

(Yeah, I know, it's business, blah, blah ... but make some fans happy and who knows how powerful that might be ...)

(Yep, time for another lie down ....)