[Info-vax] Final Orace release on VMS.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 11/12/2020 11:46 AM, Marc Van Dyck wrote:
> Jan-Erik Söderholm brought next idea :
>> Den 2020-11-12 kl. 17:05, skrev Arne Vajhøj:
>>> On 10/28/2020 9:59 AM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
>>>> In article <rnbs20$on2$1 at panix2.panix.com>, kludge at panix.com (Scott
>>>> Dorsey) writes:
>>>>> Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) <helbig at asclothestro.multivax.de> 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> What fraction of paying VMS customers use Oracle "classic" (which is
>>>>>> what the announcement is about)?  What fraction use Rdb?  What 
>>>>>> fraction
>>>>>> use some other database?  What fraction use no database (not counting
>>>>>> RMS)?
>>>>>
>>>>> Probably not many use Oracle Classic.  However, if there is any 
>>>>> chance of
>>>>> expanding the customer base at all and get new people to use VMS, 
>>>>> having
>>>>> support for Oracle is a big, big deal.  There are a lot of people 
>>>>> using
>>>>> Oracle on their back end systems.
>>>>
>>>> Big users of Oracle Classic probably have an application very tied to
>>>> the database.  There isn't a huge advantage for them moving to VMS.  My
>>>> guess is that, among paying customers, more than half use Rdb and less
>>>> than 1% Oracle Classic.

>> Seems as the response from Oracle is to run your applications as
>> usual using the client kit, but have the server on another platform.
> 
> With support for the client until end 2022 only, and for the server
> end of 2027. And on Itanium only, as there will not be any port to
> X86 at all, even not the client.
> 
> In other words, start migrating today. WHat's the proportion of VSI
> customers who need access to an Oracle database ? If all those cannot
> migrate to X86, is the viability of VSI still guaranteed ? Who's going
> to bet the farm on that, with one year subscription licenses ?

The consensus here seems to be that while Rdb is critical for VMS
then Oracle DB (Oracle classic) is not,

So VSI may survive. But it is the wrong direction. We need VMS
support in more products not less less products.

But as I listed then there are still plenty of relational databases 
available on VMS. It may be better spent effort trying to promote those
than trying to persuade Oracle (oracle seems to be  on a Linux focused
path and that is probably a top decision - not easy to change).

Arne

PS: And as I mentioned previously then you can always chose something
     J'ish on VMS as Oracle thin JDBC driver is pure Java and does
     not care about the OS.