Lisa Vaas

I was tickled pink to read last week that the U.S. Justice Department and the state of Michigan were enterprise-sized hypocrites. Heres a recap of the news: Both of these governmental bodies are suing Oracle Corp. for antitrust violations in its pursuit to take over PeopleSoft Inc. (As are a slew of other states, the […]

With Tuesdays announcement that Oracle will package Oracle Database 10g on Dell servers, the database price wars got a whole lot more interesting. If theres one advantage Microsoft has had over Oracle in this war, its been on the channel side. Try as it might to grab small to midsize business (SMB) market share away […]

Oracle Corp.s announcement Tuesday that it is bundling its Standard Edition One database prepackaged on Dell PowerEdge servers formed the latest salvo in the ongoing database price war launched against Microsoft Corp. and its low-cost SQL Server database. Predictably, Microsoft was dismissive of the move. “They did the same thing back with Standard Edition One,” […]

Attention, Wal-Mart shoppers: If the quantity of data that eventually pours out of RFID technology is half as voluminous as the recent spate of vendor announcements and their concurrent hot-air hype, every DBA in the land should take cover. To wit: As Renee Ferguson reported Monday in her story “Taking on RFID Challenge,” TIBCO, WebMethods, […]

While Oracle Corp. on Tuesday rolled out technology geared toward helping companies cope with the oceans of data that Oracle hopes will soon flow from RFID tags and readers, some say that vendors havent yet proved that anybody needs it. “Its a technology in search of a problem right now,” said Jeff Woods, an analyst […]

The database price war is heating up, with Oracle launching worldwide initiatives aimed at getting its wares into the hands of SMBs in the Middle East, Africa and the European Union, for example. The database kingpin is launching bundling initiatives with Sun Microsystems and bolstering its channel by offering partner discounts. Its all part of […]

So, its late. SQL Server 2005, Yukon, is not going to ship until mid-2005. So what? Who cares? Users are actually downright gleeful that theyre going to get a major new release thats more stable than a two-legged stool. /zimages/3/28571.gifTo read about the release date slippage for Yukon and Whidbey, click here. For me, a […]

A handful of enterprises appealed to the U.S. District Court of Northern California earlier this week to further restrict Oracle Corp.s access to documents obtained by the U.S. Department of Justice in its suit to block Oracles $9.4 billion hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft Inc. The enterprises—the U.S. Department of Defense, Microsoft Corp., SAP AG, […]

Oracles Larry Ellison had good reason to preen over Oracles red-blooded, healthy-as-a-horse financial statement, announced Thursday. Net income for the quarter was up 11 percent over year-ago figures, third-quarter revenues jumped 9 percent, and software license sales were up 12 percent. Ellison points to the companys milestone database upgrade, Oracle Database 10g, as being the […]

The wait for the long-awaited Yukon and Whidbey is going to be longer still, eWEEK.com has learned. Microsoft Corp. Director of Product Management for SQL Server Tom Rizzo confirmed that Microsoft expects to ship both Yukon—Microsofts code name for the next major update of its SQL Server database—and Whidbey—the coming update of Visual Studio—in the […]

The nub of the Oracle-PeopleSoft fight is whether the market for back-office applications will shrink. Thats a vitally important question, and it bears a closer look. Ironically, the Justice Department, in a 17-page civil antitrust lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, used Oracle Co-President Chuck Phillips own words against the […]

Oracle declared a price war on Microsoft when it cut the price of its entry-level database to match that of SQL Server earlier this month. Since then, thereve been compelling reasons put forth by Microsoft (I know: how surprising—not!) and AMR Research to point out all the good reasons why SQL Server fans would rather […]