[Info-vax] Oracle loses appeal in HP/Oracle Lawsuit

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

Paul Sture wrote 2013-02-15 16:15:
> In article <kfjqb9$bnd$1 at news.albasani.net>,
>   Jan-Erik Soderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> There is Bliss in Rdb. Lack of official support for Bliss on Windows NT
>> made Oracle to withdraw the Rdb7/Windows product lately in the process.
>>
>> Note also that Rdb creates executable machine code for the target
>> architecture on the fly when running "Dynamic SQL" statements.
>>
>
> Given the discussions about the complexity of compilers for Itanium,
> generating machine code probably requires a fair bit of expertise, and
> that probably doesn't come cheap.

A presentation by Ian Smith from 2011 says:

Delivered native instruction compiler for
Integrity (default in 7.2.3):
– Continued refinement of generated code
– Smaller code sequences
– More overlapping execution
– Increased use of zero source registers (R0)
– Reduce alignment faults from generated queries


There is also a paper written by Norm Lastovica about
the Itanium port. It has parts about the code generation.
It also has a list of tools to build Rbd (21 tools listed).

http://download.oracle.com/otndocs/products/rdb/pdf/rdbtf05_itaniumport.pdf

It also says :
"Rdb generates architecture-specific executable subroutines at run-time".

See also:

"The Oracle Rdb Run-Time Code Generator for the OpenVMS Itanium Platform"
Norman Lastovica, Senior Managing Engineer, Oracle Corporation

http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/journal/v14/rdb_interp_compile.pdf


Jan-Erik.


>
>>
>>
>>> and
>>> Oracle would have to retain some expertise there that isn't required on any
>>> other platform.
>>>
>>> So my question is, if Oracle sees value (profits) in continuing to sell
>>> RDB, with it's unique (VMS only) requirements in doing so, then just what
>>> the hell would be so expensive in continuing to sell Oracle Classic on
>>> HP-UX, and VMS?
>>
>> Note that Rdb was never realy part of the move from Oracle to stop
>> development on Itanium. At least not if you listen to the (Rdb) folks
>> from Oracle themselfs.
>
> But for the aeroplane magazine reading CEOs Oracle is Oracle.
>
> In an interview for a role in the nineties I made the mistake of saying
> "Rdb" and was immediately corrected by the director of IT with
> "Oracle/Rdb".  I took that to mean that he had sold it to the board as
> being a name they knew.  This was also a big mainframe shop.
>