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Spencer was worried as his deadline approached. it was starting to look like the highlight of his week had been watching “Joey Heatherton: The E! True Hollywood Story.”
The gossipy Grimalkins ears perked up when he heard that the fur was flying at McDonalds Canada. Besides flipping fromage burgers, the company had reportedly done the dirty deed and switched from Big Blues DB2 to Oracles 8i. In its enthusiasm to tout the switch, Oracle apparently forgot to run the press release past the McDonalds CIO before brandishing it before journalists. The CIO supposedly blew a gasket when he got wind that Mickey Ds was looking like a pawn in the Oracle-IBM database wars, according to Tabby tattlers from Oracle and IBM.
His Hirsuteness was amused at how each side interpreted this super-size tale, though. The Oracle camp said the McInformation Officer was afraid of incurring IBMs wrath if he was quoted in the press release—possibly because McDonalds Canada may still maintain a McWhopping amount of data on Big Blue hardware.
But IBM claimed McDonalds Canada never actually made the jump from DB2 to 8i and blew the whistle on Ellison & Co.s less-than-truthful portrayal of the situation.
Oracle still swears its got a list of other DB2 defectors a mile long. “If thats true,” the Puss pondered, “I wonder why they didnt pull some names out of the hat to divert attention from the IBM-Informix merger?”
Speaking of the IBM-Informix deal, the Lynx heard from a Linux lover who believes Big Blue may have acquired the company for its Universe and Unidata multidimensional databases.
Informix acquired the databases with its purchase of Ardent a year ago. Multidimensional relational databases are often used in data warehousing projects, and integrating them into future versions of DB2 may be IBMs reason for the acquisition.
The Furball switched channels quickly and caught the latest on “NetDocs: The True Redmond Story!” NetDocs is the internal code name for the single, integrated application that Microsoft demonstrated at its .Net unveiling last June. El Gato now hears that the 400-member NetDocs team is very grumpy over recently being placed under the Office umbrella. A Katt crony claims that the two teams had previously been pitted against each other, in typical Microsoft fashion. NetDocs was supposed to be delivered over the Internet until Redmond felt the need to ensure the success of Office XP, the next version of its packaged software.
The tipster claims NetDocs helmsman Brian Macdonald took an immediate leave of absence, citing family reasons, after the decision to shift his team to the Office side was made.
Reportedly, the newly relocated NetDocs staff was so bitter over having to work with the once-rival Office team that a wholesale exodus from the Redmond campus was feared. According to the Puss pal, Microsoft is believed to have offered the NetDocs team the option of moving to any other division in the company to avoid such a massive defection.
“You wont find a software Spartacus story like that watching Tabloid TV,” mused the Mouser.