back to article Stay classy: Amazon's Jassy gets sassy with Larry

Amazon’s consumer business has switched off its Oracle data warehouse and will be almost Big Red-free by Christmas – at least according to AWS boss Andy Jassy. The claims – made over Twitter, so it must be true – were then doubled down on by Amazon CTO Werner Vogels, who said that the database was one of the largest in the …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Redshift was announced in 2012!

    Filed under "We have to eat our own dogfood", looks like its taken Amazon 6 years to migrate their Data Warehouse to RedShift? And that’s a success? And looking at the worlds largest Data Warehouses, can't seem to find Amazon listed in top 10? Will be interesting to see how Amazon holds up during the holidays considering that their last "PrimeDay" had major outages apparently because they migrated off Oracle. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/23/amazon-move-off-oracle-caused-prime-day-outage-in-warehouse.html

    1. ckm5

      Re: Redshift was announced in 2012!

      @mr_anonymous_Oracle_PR_flack Those top 10 lists are bullshit - the only people who put out any information about the size of their data warehouses are the ones that have something to gain from the PR....

      Fact is a ton of people have moved away from traditional vendors, including Oracle, because their shit just doesn't work in modern, high performance distributed systems - Netflix made this point years ago when they tried a traditional BI stack and it failed miserably.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Redshift was announced in 2012!

      Moving from a preview beta in 2012 to using it as a large enterprise platform in 2018 is pretty impressive.

      It took 9 years for Oracle to get to PL/SQL, and it's coming up towards its 40th birthday. 6 years is not a lot in Oracle world.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "It took 9 years for Oracle to get to PL/SQL"

        Are you comparing 1980s system and technologies with 2012 ones? It's far easier when you have forty years of prior art and developer experience available... just remember what databases were before Oracle.

        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: "It took 9 years for Oracle to get to PL/SQL"

          just remember what databases were before Oracle

          What, you mean System R? INGRES? MRDS?

          Or, y'know, if relational DBMSes aren't your thing - SYSTEM 2000 (hash-pointer), IMS (hierarchical), various CODASYL (network-index, such as IDMS), and so on.

          Oracle was the first software vendor dedicated to an RDBMS product. They were the first to bet the farm on the relational model and push it hard. They weren't the first to sell an RDBMS or make one available for free. And while the relational model unquestionably had certain advantages over network and hierarchical databases, those earlier approaches did well on the modest hardware of the day and were suitable for many use cases.

    3. Spazturtle Silver badge

      Re: Redshift was announced in 2012!

      "https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/23/amazon-move-off-oracle-caused-prime-day-outage-in-warehouse.html"

      That is fake news, see: https://twitter.com/Werner/status/1054901529478459392

  2. Bronek Kozicki

    Unique capabilities of Oracle databases, hahaha. Like performance at the cost of data consistency, without support for fully serializable model.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Unique capabilities?

      Try installing legacy fat client applications on a locked down Windows desktop machine and you will see the uniqueness..

      No-one else makes it anything like as difficult to install their database client when you have to install the whole 1.3Gb of dross, most of which you will never use, in a non-standard location. (24 years on, and Oracle *still* havent figured out "Program files"). (Oh, and you cant use program files anyway, because some things in there dont work properly if you have filenames with spaces)

      Or the fact its basically impossible to install on a headless server without installing X and all its libraries or VNC,

      Or the fact its so uniquely embedded in so many places, people dont dare rip it out despite Oracles "Innovative" and "Unique" pricing structure ...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Unique capabilities?

        Never heard of instant client? Also, Oracle is not the only cross platform application that installs outside program files. While you don't need a full installation with all the administration tools on any client. Or, if performance not an issue, you can still use ODBC. The "space" issue it's because the use of Java - and a clear *nix issue. Just try to use spaces with some VMWare utilities, and enjoy how they fail spectacularl, leaving you to clean the mess.

        Moreover, installs on a locked down machine should be done with someone with the required privileges, not anybody. If you don't have the privileges you can't install anything in program files as well.

  3. phuzz Silver badge

    Oracle are so bad to work with, they force companies to invent their own database platforms just to get away.

    Now that's customer service!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Vendors and their largest customers

      "Oracle are so bad to work with, they force companies to invent their own database platforms just to get away.

      Now that's customer service!"

      Kinda like the old hardware vendors (IBM, HP, SUN, etc): "they force(d) companies (AMZN, FB, GOOG, MSFT) to invent their own database (and hardware) platforms just to get away."

      Arrogance is vendor neutral....

  4. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Happy

    Seasonal best wishes

    I'm no lover of Amazon, but Lounge-suit Larry is so in need of a real slap that I hope they get through Christmas without so much as a stutter.

  5. SVV

    Oracle have a nice approach to customer privacy

    Even if your customer is Amazon, publicly declaring what they bought and how much they paid shows zero integrity. Oh how sweet it would be if Amazon revealed that last year a Mr L Ellison spent thousands of dollars on certain DVDs and miscellaneous products as this is now apparently acceptable behaviour.

    1. Malcolm Weir Silver badge

      Optional

      @SVV, while it would be amusing, the very wealthy don't usually use their own names even when they use normal distribution channels, nor do they tend to use their street addresses.

      So if you can correlate "Mr/Ms. Discrete Employee, Innocuous Services Inc, Near Woodside, CA" with Mr. Ellison, you probably don't need to worry about replacing your database....

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oracle have a nice approach to customer privacy

      Companies don't have privacy.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    > there isn’t a rule about not fudging numbers on Twitter.

    No, but as Elon Musk found out, you don't want to mess about enough to piss off the SEC with stuff that can materially affect your stock prices.

    1. Spazturtle Silver badge

      If a company informs shareholders that Twitter is an official communication channel then they are no longer allowed to lie on Twitter. Elon told people to check his Twitter for official news, so when he did lie the SEC were able to bite him.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'll say this for Oracle...

    ...it is expensive.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Red means stop.

    Of all the DB's I've worked with, Oracle stands out by far as the one that has caused the most problems and as the most difficult to work with. And for no real advantages either.

    And now some bright spark has decided we need to support Oracle on AWS for our customers, which means a shed-load of development effort and unique customization. If I wasn't already past the point of giving up with our manglement I would be questioning their sanity.

    The fact that AWS supports Oracle DB suggest they're not averse to making money off it.

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