THE DATA ADMINISTRATION NEWSLETTER – TDAN.com
ROBERT S. SEINER – PUBLISHER

By the time you read this it will be January 2004 and we will be looking back on another eventful year. The database software market was particularly active with acquisitions and attempted acquisitions, new versions of DBMS products being announced and some even delivered. All of this churning and burning around us as not only the size of our databases increased - but also the amount of money we spent on database technology.

Now with all of that in mind, let's examine the highlights of the last three months of 2003.

Industry Analysts Tout DBMS Market Growth

In early November, analysts at the Aberdeen Group released the fifth edition of their Database Buying Guide. Aberdeen Group is an IT research and consulting organization that monitors enterprise-user needs, technological changes and market developments.

The Aberdeen Database Buying Guide indicates that the market for DBMS software will expand to over $10 billion by the end of 2003. According to Aberdeen, the key factor contributing to this growth is an influx of new applications for database technology. Additionally, the weak economy helped to ignite a renewed attention to proprietary information as a source of competitive advantage - and therefore on the databases that provide this information.

According to Aberdeen, the range of choices for buyers across all sectors of the database market is shifting with the advent of specialized databases and the rising ability of Microsoft SQL Server to support high-end applications. Web services, too, are cited as a driving force for database implementation and market growth.

Aberdeen breaks the market into five segments, as follows:

1. High-end enterprise databases
2. Embedded databases, such as those used primarily as an integral part of an application
3. Second-tier databases that run on the application server or application tier of a three-tier Web architecture
4. Mobile, desktop, and workgroup databases that focus on small footprint and an individual, or few users
5. Specialized databases, comprising interesting technology in niche markets

Finally, Aberdeen points out that administrative costs will continue to increase in importance as a DBMS purchasing criterion. For additional information on this research report, or to obtain a copy, go to the Aberdeen web site at http://aberdeen.chtah.com/a/hA-q8GEAEYEHQAOO3cNAD3JytEO/aber11.

Aberdeen was not the only analyst firm chiming in on the database market this past quarter. Gartner, Inc. also published a research report surveying the "OLTP Database Management System Market." Gartner evaluated six DBMS products from four vendors and evaluated their financial viability and market commitment, alliances and ISV support, references, innovation, usability and affordability, portability and suitability, performance and reliability, and availability and serviceability. IBM's DB2 for z/OS and Oracle9i took the top spots. Both were rated as a "solid provider of strategic products" and the Gartner report recommended existing customers to continue investing in the products.

Interestingly, the Gartner research touted Oracle9i more for Oracle's alliances, than for its market strength. Whereas Oracle has been losing ground lately, their biggest competitors, DB2 and SQL Server, have experienced revenue growth. DB2 for z/OS, on the other hand, was touted more for IBM's ongoing R&D commitment, but was taken to task for a lack of third party application support.

VLDB: Big, Bigger, Biggest

Another highlight of this quarter was the release of Winter Corporation's Top Ten Program survey results. Winter Corporation regularly surveys database users to identify the world's largest and most heavily used databases. In November the results of Winter Corporation's fifth VLDB survey were made available.

The results show that we are continuing to push the boundaries of what is considered a large database. By all accounts database size and power are growing faster than ever before. Indeed, the largest database on record is approaching 30 terabytes in size.

For the first time in the history of the VLDB survey, the size of the biggest decision-support database surpassed the largest transaction-processing database. Given the vast amount of data stored in data warehouses, the only thing surprising about this is that it took so long to occur. Obviously, data analysis continues to increase in importance as organizations attempt to discover patterns in their data for competitive advantage. France Telecom holds the distinction of having the largest decision-support database with 29.2 terabytes of data. This is triple the size of the top decision-support database in the last survey conducted by Winter Corporation (in 2001). The France Telecom system is an Oracle database running on Hewlett-Packard hardware.

On the OLTP side of the ledger, the United Kingdom's Land Registry topped the list with a database size of 18.3 terabytes. And that is just about double the size of the last OLTP winner. The Land Registry system is a DB2 database running on an IBM mainframe.

Interestingly, all four of the top OLTP systems run on IBM mainframes; as well as six of the top ten. Three of the top ten OLTP systems run on DB2 for z/OS. IDMS and Datacom, both from Computer Associates, constitute the other mainframe DBMSs used by those in the top ten. The DSS systems, on the other hand, were dominated by Unix implementations. Four of the top ten DSS systems run on NCR using Teradata; three of the top ten run Oracle on either Sun or HP machines.

In terms of number of rows, another criteria for judging database size, AT&T tops the DSS list with just over 496 billion rows. For transaction processing, UPS is the leader with just under 42 billion rows. Once again, the decision support leader runs on a Unix system; the OLTP leader runs on an IBM mainframe.

According to Winter Corporation several survey respondents indicated that their transaction processing and decision support systems will more than double in size by the end of 2006. Due to this fast growth, Winter Corp. plans to update the survey results again in 2004.

More details of Winter Corp.'s Top Ten Program can be found at http://www.wintercorp.com/VLDB/2003_TopTen_Survey/TopTenProgram.html.

Meanwhile, the Big Peoplesoft Acquisition Standoff Continues

The on-going Oracle and Peoplesoft acquisition saga continued on in the fourth quarter of 2003 without a lot of additional fanfare. Larry Ellison and his intrepid minions at Oracle continue to pronounce their enduring intentions to acquire Peoplesoft. And Craig Conway and company over at Peoplesoft continue to proclaim that it just ain't gonna happen. Basically we have the "same old, same old" here - so what new happened?

Well, in early October USA Today reported that the United States Justice Department was getting ready for a "possible antitrust challenge to the takeover." And the Justice department also assigned Kent Brown, one of its most senior antitrust lawyers, to the case - seen by many as a sign it is serious about opposing the deal. Although some expected the government's inquiry to be completed by December, it has yet to be finished at the time of this writing (late December 2003).

In mid-October, SAP America President and CEO Bill McDermott derided Oracle's bid for PeopleSoft as being bad for customers. Of course, that is to be expected. A combined Oracle/Peoplesoft would likely be a larger foe of SAP's application business, which currently enjoys a 60 percent market share. So, let's not examine SAP's opinion too closely on this topic!

Then amidst all of the acquisition hoopla, at Oracle's annual shareholder meeting in October Larry Ellison announced that he would not be making a bid to buy Sun Microsystems. But he did acknowledge that he thought about it. And somehow that was newsworthy. What has happened to our industry when you have to announce that you are not going to acquire another company?

Ellison did re-affirm his commitment to acquiring Peoplesoft during the shareholder meeting, too. As well as his commitment to Oracle's on-going acquisitive bent. Ellison noted: "As the industry matures and we grow larger and larger, we will have to grow through a combination of developing new products and buying other companies." But he did not specify any potential takeover targets.

In other "news" from the Oracle shareholder conference, Ellison commented on Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's new governor-elect. Ellison stated that Schwarzenegger's "policies are a substantial improvement over the previous governor." Of course, to make sense of this you have to recall that Oracle was caught up in a controversial software contract that was canceled by the state of California during Gray Davis' administration.

So as expected, Oracle extended its Peoplesoft bid again in early October. That marked the fifth time the bid was extended--this time until the end of the December 2003. And guess what, if Oracle is serious about this bid, they will probably have to extend it again (and might have done so already by the time you read this).

In late November, Oracle announced it plans to propose a slate of pro-acquisition directors for Peoplesoft shareholders to vote on next year. This may seem like an interesting end-run on Peoplesoft, but if Oracle cannot convince Peoplesoft shareholders to pony up their shares how does it expect to convince them to elect pro-Oracle directors? Curious...

My position remains that this acquisition is more likely to fail than to succeed. The Department of Justice may block it, but that is not required for it to fail. It is already a huge deal that will probably have to be increased if Peoplesoft's stock continues to perform as it has. Peoplesoft stock (NASDAQ: PSFT) was trading in the low 20s throughout most of December - and that is above Oracle's last bid of $19.50 per share. Usually a hostile takeover bid offers a nice margin over the current price of the stock - not a loss. Only a fool would tender their shares at $19.50 when they can sell them on the open market today for over $20.

Peoplesoft meanwhile received some bad press this past quarter too. As it began the process of absorbing J.D. Edwards, Peoplesoft announced job cuts of up to 1000 employees. Even though Peoplesoft claimed that most of the cuts were overlapping administrative jobs, some viewed the number of layoffs as excessive.

And a trial date was set for the lawsuit regarding Peoplesoft's refund program. The program in question offers to refund customer's money in the event Peoplesoft is acquired. But after reading through the actual wording of the program some Peoplesoft shareholders are suing to have the program blocked. Evidently the refund can kick in under certain conditions even if Peoplesoft is not actually acquired.

Peoplesoft instituted the program in June 2003 offering to repay its customers from two to five times their licensing fees if the company was acquired and certain support levels were not met. Although Peoplesoft has revised some of the program's terms since it began, the program had tallied more than $800 million in liabilities as of September 30th, and has been extended through December 2003.

According to documents files by Peoplesoft with the SEC, the Delaware Court of Chancery has decided to "tentatively reserve time" in March and April "for a possible trial or other proceedings" as warranted.

Other Oracle Tidbits

In mid-October, the Sacramento Bee reported that Oracle plans to move approximately 175 of its data processing jobs to India by May 2004. Details on exactly which jobs were not provided.

And in other non-technology Oracle news, two more books were published detailing the life and exploits of Larry Ellison. The two biographies are interesting for different reasons. The first, "Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle" by Matthew Symonds (Simon & Schuster) is entertaining because it is interspersed with footnote commentary by Larry his-own-self. If you read this book you simply must read the footnotes right along with the rest of the text. It is almost like having Ellison reading over your shoulder and chiming in with his comments. Sometimes funny, sometimes bewildering, Ellison's comments are always entertaining.

The other book, "Everyone Else Must Fail: The Unvarnished Truth About Larry Ellison and Oracle" by Karen Southwick (Crown Publishing), suffers upon comparison because of a lack of Larry. Still, for anyone interested in Oracle, Southwick's book is useful as what seems to me to be a more independent view of its subject.

Overall, "Softwar" is more sympathetic to both Larry Ellison and Oracle - as might be expected given Ellison's involvement. On the other hand, "Everyone Else Must Fail" is overly negative, in my opinion. The Southwick book comes to the conclusion that Ellison is too much of a control freak. Now don't get me wrong, Ellison seems to thrive on being in charge - but for some reason, that seems to be just what keeps Oracle humming along, in my opinion.

Oracle Technology News

But Oracle was in the news this past quarter not just for its acquisitive hi-jinks and tell-all books, but also with its technology. In early December Oracle released a patch for a security vulnerability that was exposed in several versions of its DBMS, application server, and HTTP server products. The security vulnerability was due to flaws in the SSL and TLS security protocols used within Oracle's products. For more details on the problem, refer to documentation posted by Carnegie Mellon University's CERT Coordination Center at http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2003-26.html.

Also, in December, Oracle shipped its first product exploiting grid technology, Oracle Application Server 10g. At the time of this writing Oracle still planned to ship its grid-enabled DBMS before the end of the year (2003, that is).

Sticking with the topic of the Oracle 10g DBMS for a moment, industry analysts at Gartner cautioned companies about immediately upgrading to 10g. In mid-October Gartner indicated that firms migrating from Oracle8i in mid- to late 2004 should consider 10g, but anyone moving earlier might be better off moving first to Oracle9i. The Gartner analysts recommend waiting to adopt the new technology until early adopters shake out the bugs - not a bad idea for most new software products, actually.

That Big Blue Machine Keeps Humming

Of course, Oracle was not the only database company in the news. IBM made news of its own - albeit of the more boring technology variety.

In mid-October, IBM announced two new Data Warehouse editions of DB2 that provide more flexible business intelligence features. First up we have the DB2 UDB Data Warehouse Enterprise Edition. Geared for high-end users, this business intelligence platform includes data partitioning, integrated OLAP, advanced data mining, enhanced ETL with federated sources, workload management, and support for Microsoft Excel. It is engineered for large data warehouse environments.

The second offering announced by IBM is DB2 UDB Data Warehouse Standard Edition. This product is targeted at the mid-market. Offering a complete data mart infrastructure it includes DB2, integrated OLAP, advanced data mining, ETL, and support for Microsoft Excel.

Both offerings provide advanced statistical functions such as correlation, co-variance, and standard deviation, along with a complete family of linear regression functions. Other features such as materialized query tables (MQTs), IBM's patented multidimensional clustering index and table structures, cube views, and star Join optimization make these offerings ideal for data warehousing implementations.

IBM also previewed planned enhancements for the next version of DB2 UDB (code named Stinger) at Microsoft's Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles. With shipment planned during calendar year 2004, Stinger may offer some .Net exploitation before Microsoft (whose Yukon version of SQL Server is planned for the latter half of 2004).

The Stinger preview focused on features that simplify software development for programmers. IBM highlighted productivity tools for building applications, an enhanced .Net Data Provider, and better integration with IBM's Rational suite of development tools. Additional improvements include tools that enable developers of DB2 applications using Visual Basic .Net and C# to also use the Microsoft Common Language Runtime (CLR).

Of course, IBM also claims to be building better availability and manageability into the upcoming Stinger release of DB2, as well.

The Boys Up North

There was not much news to report from the Microsoft camp in the fourth quarter of 2003. Plans for Yukon haven't changed; its release is still planned for the second half of 2004.

Of course, Microsoft was touting its .Net capabilities at the PDC event, too. In a keynote address, Gordon Mangione, Microsoft's VP of the SQL Server development team, explained that serviceability will be key for the Yukon release of SQL Server. This is keeping in line with the latest DBMS trend of making database software more self-managing. Mangione talked about Yukon tools that will help SQL Server users figure out what goes wrong as soon as it goes wrong. Well, we'll see about that! Most of the self-management schemes of the DBMS vendors are decidedly lightweight and fail to deliver "lights out" database administration.

Sybase Launches ASE 12.5.1

Finally, Sybase, Inc., a second-tier DBMS provider, released Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) 12.5.1 early in the quarter. ASE 12.5.1 delivers features to help DBAs better manage Sybase databases. Improvements were added to make ASE more self-managing, including better space management, problem diagnosis features, automated scheduling capabilities, and transportable databases. Furthermore, Sybase ASE 12.5.1 offers improved system performance with scalable logging, parallel recovery, index sampling, temporary databases per application or login and improved database reorganization. Auld Lang Syne!

And so as we end another year, we can look back on a vibrant and interesting DBMS marketplace. Lift your glasses and toast 2003 - and while you're at it, let's give a toast to 2004, too. And be sure to tune in to each new issue of TDAN.com to read about the exploits of the DBMS vendors in The Database Report.