There appears to be the perception out there that either this community does not exist, or that if it does exist, it must be “centrally controlled” by some evil PR mastermind – and neither assertion is even remotely accurate. <\/em><\/p>\nI can’t comment on Oracle’s internal blogging model, but I have zero contact with Oracle (although apparently that’s a problem, which\u00a0I’ll come back to in a minute) so they exercise no control over what I say and have never tried to influence it. I can’t make that claim for others, of course, and they might try one day for all I know.<\/p>\n
What might add some more interesting fuel to the debate is that I once tried to encourage\u00a0more Oracle people\u00a0to blog and\u00a0the single reply\u00a0was completely negative! Why? He’s a coder and he felt blogging was just a distraction 😉<\/p>\n
So maybe\u00a0Oracle should have a close relationship with external bloggers? Eh? Once Oracle start inviting bloggers to private press briefings are we sure that the result will be a feedback loop, leading to improved products? If so, I’m all for it. However, I can’t help thinking that a formal blogger relations program has a hint of, ummmm, bribery about it? Maybe I’m being harsh, but the world is full of largely uncritical writers enjoying their travel expenses and free drinks whilst raving about how release blah-point-blah will change the business landscape or perfume X will change your life.<\/p>\n
(I suppose there was a brief moment the other night when I was wearing my Oracle ACE fleece and ordering The Boys to bring my tea to me on a silver tray when I considered praising Fusion, but then I forgot.)<\/p>\n
Frankly I’d question anything Oracle give me for nothing and it worries me that others seem to place such a high value on a software vendor’s invitations. Of course, I’m keen on attending Open World, could use a nice holiday and attend some presentations but I really don’t see why Oracle should have a particular conversation with me because I’ve got a naturally active mouth, rather than speaking to their big customers. Unless, of course, they’re keen to keep people “on message”? God, I’ll be getting an invitation\u00a0to tea with Tony Blair next (and he’d get an even less positive response).<\/p>\n
Mmmm, the more I think about it, isn’t what I’m doing here much more to do with ‘community’ than any formal blogger relations program?<\/p>\n
What don’t I like about Oracle in my personal dealings with them? Erm, well if they made the 10g ‘automatic’ tuning features part of the base product, I’d probably settle for that and feel I’d performed a genuine community service. Really, it’s a little embarassing to offer XML and Java in a database for nothing, but not the best server monitoring tools. <\/p>\n
I’m always conscious of being in a bit of a minority, though. I have to rack my brains for the times I curse Oracle. I hear it all the time from people I work beside and those in the community who I respect, but I’ve just never had those strong negative feelings myself. Bugs? Patches? Security Updates? Are you *sure* other companies are so much worse at addressing these? I struggle to see it personally, although it’s fair to say that you pay pretty handsome support fees for the privilege!<\/p>\n
It’s also true that I’m not in the software purchasing role, so price isn’t a factor for me personally. If it was, I’m sure I’d be more of a MySQL fan.<\/p>\n
What do I like? Well, when I listen to the excitement reverberating from the recent MySQL conference (a colleague just returned and I know a couple of other guys who attended), I can’t help thinking, god, if you guys knew what Oracle could do, I wonder how excited you’d be? (In fact, some of them do and when I say, so how does it compare to Oracle, they all agree, ‘oh, it’s miles behind, but it’s getting there!’. Bizarre.)<\/p>\n
That goes to the crux of this issue. Oracle aren’t cool but, frankly, I don’t care. What I care about is that they make a hell of a database server and when someone comes along and shows me one that’s much better, I’ll say ‘wow, cool’ and start blogging about that instead. Maybe it’s the software that counts? Anything else is just noise.<\/p>\n
Yeah, I’m a dinosaur 😉<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dammit, I’m going to have to start writing about Oracle again! Even worse, it’s not technical but (cough) opinion and analysis 🙁 I saw Justin Kestelyn’s blog last week and my immediate reaction was slightly sympathetic, but I decided to sit back for a few days and watch the fun develop, particularly as I’m spinning… Continue reading Oracle and Community Involvement<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1258,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/25\/new-oracle-ace\/","url_meta":{"origin":1263,"position":0},"title":"New Oracle ACE","date":"April 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, I never. They'll let anyone in these days! I suppose a sexy photo helps ...\ud83d\ude09I can't wait for the presentation ceremony!","rel":"","context":"With 15 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1294,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/12\/oracle-11g-total-recall\/","url_meta":{"origin":1263,"position":1},"title":"Oracle 11g – Total Recall","date":"July 12, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I suppose most readers will be aware that Oracle held a big launch for 11g yesterday, including the release of various technical docs at OTN. I've only managed a quick scan because I'm up to my eyeballs in some internal ASH\/AWR training I'm giving later today, but what particularly interested\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 5 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1259,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/04\/26\/what-im-buying-tom-kyte-for-christmas\/","url_meta":{"origin":1263,"position":2},"title":"What I’m buying Tom Kyte for Christmas","date":"April 26, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The latest mind-reading tool for Oracle questions!Thanks to Andy Campbell for that one \ud83d\ude09","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1289,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/07\/04\/awr-licensing\/","url_meta":{"origin":1263,"position":3},"title":"AWR Licensing","date":"July 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I thought I'd wait for a few days to see how the open letter to Larry Ellison on the subject of AWR licencing panned out.I love AWR, ASH and I even have an increasing, slightly grudging and cynical respect for ADDM. In fact, I'm in the course of putting together\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 15 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1283,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/10\/blogs-oracle-com-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":1263,"position":4},"title":"blogs.oracle.com … part 2","date":"June 10, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"OK, I finally have a few technical things worth blogging about, so let me get this non-technical one wrapped up first. Here's part 1.The other part of Kevin's blog that was very relevant to my recent musings was the section titled 'Aristocracy or Meritocracy'. He talks about the close contact\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 7 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1280,"url":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/2007\/06\/08\/blogs-oracle-com-oracle-ace-otn-does-any-of-it-matter\/","url_meta":{"origin":1263,"position":5},"title":"blogs.oracle.com, Oracle Ace, OTN, does any of it matter?","date":"June 8, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I actually woke up early today to write this blog as I wanted to sleep on it first and blogging on-site is a real no-no. Anyway ...Many of you will remember the ongoing shenanigans around Justin Kestelyn's complaints about how Oracle is perceived by the Web 2.0 community. I had\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 17 comments","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/orcldoug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}