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In 2001/2003, I led a small team at an agency that converted Kraftfoods and 50+ brands from 25+ ATG Dynamo web/app CMS servers + 20+ Oracle servers to .NET 1.0

In 2001/2003, I led a small team at an agency that converted Kraftfoods and 50+ brands from 25+ ATG Dynamo web/app CMS servers + 20+ Oracle servers to .NET 1.0 CMS on 3 web servers, 3 app servers and 3 Microsoft SQL Servers. Even then Oracle tools were horrible for developers and still are. The only reason they had that many databases was Oracle's business is licensing, massive, expensive licenses, and their sales pushed them sold through upper management. Those days are almost over, developers choose the tech, the cloud is here. Without Tom [1], Oracle was basically not even a great developer community, all documentation was bad and the Java interfaces on the tools / management studio were horrendous. Oracle is fast but for most things on the web caching comes into play heavily and other databases are good enough. Oracle is good for large datasets/reporting, cursors are extremely fast when Oracle is tuned, the problem is it is like vehicle that needs tuning and optimization all the time or it drives bad. The cost and upkeep make Oracle mostly overkill and too painful. Ellison laughed at the cloud like Ballmer laughed at the iPhone. That was a major error. But ultimately Ellison is an engineer that forgot to make sure developers like to use the product. That will ultimately be their fatal flaw as now the developers choose the tools not what is sold in above them. All other platforms are developer centric and cloud first now. Oracle the all seeing one says the end is nigh for Oracle the database. No new projects will be using it without force. Too bad Oracle also owns MySQL, Java etc. I really wish someone else had bought Sun. [1] https://asktom.oracle.com https://asktom.oracle.com

Mountain_Skies 7y ago
Oracle's new licensing requirement for Java is a bit threat to that platform. My company for technical reasons can't switch to OpenJVM so we're going to pay Oracle their new licensing money but we're not doing any greenfield Java development and are going to work towards moving our Java applications to another platform. That's an n=1 example but wouldn't be surprised if others end up migrating away, causing longterm harm to Java.
- danbtl 7y ago
  I'm curious, what are the technical reasons OpenJVM won't work for you?
  - csomar 7y ago
    I think he complained about licensing fees?
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      But licensing fees aren't 'technical issues'. You say 'technical' to mean not related to things like licensing.
    - privateSFacct 7y ago
      Some support contracts only support if using x JDK Some software checks the exact JDK and only runs using it etc.
  - vips7L 7y ago
    OpenJDK
- edp 7y ago
  I guess you could use the OpenJDK VM for new projects even if legacy projects are reliant on the Oracle VM.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > My company for technical reasons can't switch to OpenJVM The OpenJDK (not 'OpenJVM', that's not a thing) is literally 100% the same build as Oracle JDK now. There can't be any technical reason.
  - hansjorg 7y ago
    It's the same now, but in previous versions there were important differences. Might be legacy code that's hard to make forward compatible.
    - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
      AWS is maintaining separate releases of the JDK to help offset the release shenanigans of Oracle. And there are other concerted efforts to keep control from Oracle in releases and the validity of the JDK. As long as a sufficiently large majority (and AWS is helping here a lot, admittedly) maintain such regimented discipline, the JDK will be ok. Oracle mostly wanted it to sue google for billions. That suit is basically dead, and Oracle knows the JVM isn't worth any large scale revenue.
      - guitarbill 7y ago
        Corretto is decent, but AWS just doesn't get non-Amazon devs/tooling, and so e.g. almost a year later, there is still no alpine docker image: https://github.com/corretto/corretto-8-docker/issues/1 https://github.com/corretto/corretto-8-docker/issues/1
  - toyg 7y ago
    It might be the magic "support" word - random openjdk builds don't bring any commercial guarantees. This said, the likes of RedHat, Amazon and Azul are pretty happy to offer those guarantees, and I bet their prices are lower than Big Red O.
    - thenewnewguy 7y ago
      Yes, but that wouldn't be a 'technical' reason, would it?
- brianmc21 7y ago
  We were told not to download any new versions of java due to oracle trying to extract money for it. Basically we are going to do the same. Purge every oracle product slowly but surely
  - BoyRobot777 7y ago
    > We were told <...> Yeah. Say no more... If only you would have looked. Anyhow, Oracle does the following: - Contributes pretty much all of the closed source technologies (or what was originally to become closed source) of the Oracle JDK to OpenJDK, for example giving the community: JDK Flight Recorder; JDK Mission Control; ZGC; …and probably more stuff I can’t think of right now; - Ensures the Oracle JDK and the OpenJDK builds are virtually indistinguishable; - Starts providing a free OpenJDK build (which includes all these donated technologies); - Provides uncountable man hours of maintaining and innovating the Java platform; - Ensures that the community knows where to find the free bits by linking to them, and slaps on a bright yellow warning sign, so that everyone can see that the licensing has changed; And how does the community react, you wonder? Yep, that’s right. “Oracle is the Devil”, “This is a bait and switch operation” etc. Ad nauseum. ONCE AGAIN. You do not need to use OracleJDK. Just use OpenJDK from AdoptOpenJDK.
    - vips7L 7y ago
      Isn't oracle only charging for support of older jdk's as well? If you just stay on the current version path of upgrading every 6 months you shouldn't have to pay for anything at all. Does any language offer free support for years old versions?
    - brianmc21 7y ago
      I am aware... I work in old school financial services there is more red tape and politics with these types of things. I am merely stating what our plans are. We don't really use Java for any new development on our team so the easier solution is to just avoid it. There is a big team that will need to switch over but that isn't our problem. The long short of it is we aren't a booming industry and we do it for the money so one less vendor we have to send a 7 figure check to will only increase the bonus pool.
- ako 7y ago
  We switched to AdoptOpenJDK, zero problems so far.
- twic 7y ago
  So rewriting everything onto a new platform is cheaper and less risky than doing the work to break dependencies on Oracle JDK? I know nothing about your situation, but it sounds to me like you've made a mistake somewhere.
tootie 7y ago
ATG Dynamo. Brings back some memories. It was actually a really smart platform that was killed by the vastly inferior J2EE. Spring is basically the same premise as Dynamo and is still going strong.
- drawkbox 7y ago
  J2EE reminds me of another blast from the past, a contract around the time for Java (Apache) Struts [1], boilerplate hell and not fun. Fun fact: Java (Apache) Struts 2 [2] is a vulnerability mess. It was used by Equifax on the breach: > Struts 2 has a history of critical security bugs, many tied to its use of OGNL technology; some vulnerabilities can lead to arbitrary code execution. In October 2017, it was reported that failure by Equifax to address a Struts 2 vulnerability advised in March 2017 was later exploited in the data breach that was disclosed by Equifax in September 2017. [2] They probably went with Java EE because it was "secure", little did they know Struts would enter the game. Equifax I am sure treats their developers good by how often their software was updated /s. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Struts_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Struts_1 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Struts_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Struts_2
  - democracy 7y ago
    jee is a set of interfaces, it cannot be secure or not.
- twic 7y ago
  "Memories" is an interesting way of spelling "nightmares". The Dynamo part of it, the pure application server part, had a few genuinely decent features. I've never seen a dependency injection framework like Nucleus, despite the fact that it makes an awful lot of sense. And you got /dyn/admin! The whole publishing thing - derive a versioned dual of your database schema, edit data in it using a reflective CMS, then automatically publish changes to your production database - is kind of amazing. Source control for databases. I haven't seen anything else like that. Apart from just putting databases in source control, i guess. It occasionally got absolutely screwed up, but the idea was cool! But a lot of it was absolute garbage. Repositories, where database entities are mapped to these crappy dictionary things that you need to either wrap or go mad trying to customise to actually use. Form handlers, whole classes for what would be a single handler method in a modern framework. The wacky build and packaging stuff. And then whole commerce layer of it. Pipelines where the majority of the steps are about doing cleanup and normalisation that's only necessary because of how weak ATG's data model is, and the real commerce value could have been a single 20-line function, and adding your own stages becomes and exercise in boilerplate-smithing. Catalogue maintenance, which you have to run sometimes, because apparently it's too hard to just keep the database consistent. Scenarios, the businessperson-usable customisation tool that isn't, in practice, usable by businesspeople!
dbrater 7y ago
While I know Oracle thrives off unearned reputation, (and that Ms SQL is a seriously underrated product outside of enterprises)- I refuse to believe that 3 ms-sql servers were equivalent to 20 oracle's. You must have lost something .

Mountain_Skies 7y ago

Oracle's new licensing requirement for Java is a bit threat to that platform. My company for technical reasons can't switch to OpenJVM so we're going to pay Oracle their new licensing money but we're not doing any greenfield Java development and are going to work towards moving our Java applications to another platform. That's an n=1 example but wouldn't be surprised if others end up migrating away, causing longterm harm to Java.

danbtl 7y ago
I'm curious, what are the technical reasons OpenJVM won't work for you?
- csomar 7y ago
  I think he complained about licensing fees?
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    But licensing fees aren't 'technical issues'. You say 'technical' to mean not related to things like licensing.
  - privateSFacct 7y ago
    Some support contracts only support if using x JDK Some software checks the exact JDK and only runs using it etc.
- vips7L 7y ago
  OpenJDK
edp 7y ago
I guess you could use the OpenJDK VM for new projects even if legacy projects are reliant on the Oracle VM.
chrisseaton 7y ago
> My company for technical reasons can't switch to OpenJVM The OpenJDK (not 'OpenJVM', that's not a thing) is literally 100% the same build as Oracle JDK now. There can't be any technical reason.
- hansjorg 7y ago
  It's the same now, but in previous versions there were important differences. Might be legacy code that's hard to make forward compatible.
  - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
    AWS is maintaining separate releases of the JDK to help offset the release shenanigans of Oracle. And there are other concerted efforts to keep control from Oracle in releases and the validity of the JDK. As long as a sufficiently large majority (and AWS is helping here a lot, admittedly) maintain such regimented discipline, the JDK will be ok. Oracle mostly wanted it to sue google for billions. That suit is basically dead, and Oracle knows the JVM isn't worth any large scale revenue.
    - guitarbill 7y ago
      Corretto is decent, but AWS just doesn't get non-Amazon devs/tooling, and so e.g. almost a year later, there is still no alpine docker image: https://github.com/corretto/corretto-8-docker/issues/1 https://github.com/corretto/corretto-8-docker/issues/1
- toyg 7y ago
  It might be the magic "support" word - random openjdk builds don't bring any commercial guarantees. This said, the likes of RedHat, Amazon and Azul are pretty happy to offer those guarantees, and I bet their prices are lower than Big Red O.
  - thenewnewguy 7y ago
    Yes, but that wouldn't be a 'technical' reason, would it?
brianmc21 7y ago
We were told not to download any new versions of java due to oracle trying to extract money for it. Basically we are going to do the same. Purge every oracle product slowly but surely
- BoyRobot777 7y ago
  > We were told <...> Yeah. Say no more... If only you would have looked. Anyhow, Oracle does the following: - Contributes pretty much all of the closed source technologies (or what was originally to become closed source) of the Oracle JDK to OpenJDK, for example giving the community: JDK Flight Recorder; JDK Mission Control; ZGC; …and probably more stuff I can’t think of right now; - Ensures the Oracle JDK and the OpenJDK builds are virtually indistinguishable; - Starts providing a free OpenJDK build (which includes all these donated technologies); - Provides uncountable man hours of maintaining and innovating the Java platform; - Ensures that the community knows where to find the free bits by linking to them, and slaps on a bright yellow warning sign, so that everyone can see that the licensing has changed; And how does the community react, you wonder? Yep, that’s right. “Oracle is the Devil”, “This is a bait and switch operation” etc. Ad nauseum. ONCE AGAIN. You do not need to use OracleJDK. Just use OpenJDK from AdoptOpenJDK.
  - vips7L 7y ago
    Isn't oracle only charging for support of older jdk's as well? If you just stay on the current version path of upgrading every 6 months you shouldn't have to pay for anything at all. Does any language offer free support for years old versions?
  - brianmc21 7y ago
    I am aware... I work in old school financial services there is more red tape and politics with these types of things. I am merely stating what our plans are. We don't really use Java for any new development on our team so the easier solution is to just avoid it. There is a big team that will need to switch over but that isn't our problem. The long short of it is we aren't a booming industry and we do it for the money so one less vendor we have to send a 7 figure check to will only increase the bonus pool.
ako 7y ago
We switched to AdoptOpenJDK, zero problems so far.
twic 7y ago
So rewriting everything onto a new platform is cheaper and less risky than doing the work to break dependencies on Oracle JDK? I know nothing about your situation, but it sounds to me like you've made a mistake somewhere.

tootie 7y ago

ATG Dynamo. Brings back some memories. It was actually a really smart platform that was killed by the vastly inferior J2EE. Spring is basically the same premise as Dynamo and is still going strong.

drawkbox 7y ago
J2EE reminds me of another blast from the past, a contract around the time for Java (Apache) Struts [1], boilerplate hell and not fun. Fun fact: Java (Apache) Struts 2 [2] is a vulnerability mess. It was used by Equifax on the breach: > Struts 2 has a history of critical security bugs, many tied to its use of OGNL technology; some vulnerabilities can lead to arbitrary code execution. In October 2017, it was reported that failure by Equifax to address a Struts 2 vulnerability advised in March 2017 was later exploited in the data breach that was disclosed by Equifax in September 2017. [2] They probably went with Java EE because it was "secure", little did they know Struts would enter the game. Equifax I am sure treats their developers good by how often their software was updated /s. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Struts_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Struts_1 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Struts_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Struts_2
- democracy 7y ago
  jee is a set of interfaces, it cannot be secure or not.
twic 7y ago
"Memories" is an interesting way of spelling "nightmares". The Dynamo part of it, the pure application server part, had a few genuinely decent features. I've never seen a dependency injection framework like Nucleus, despite the fact that it makes an awful lot of sense. And you got /dyn/admin! The whole publishing thing - derive a versioned dual of your database schema, edit data in it using a reflective CMS, then automatically publish changes to your production database - is kind of amazing. Source control for databases. I haven't seen anything else like that. Apart from just putting databases in source control, i guess. It occasionally got absolutely screwed up, but the idea was cool! But a lot of it was absolute garbage. Repositories, where database entities are mapped to these crappy dictionary things that you need to either wrap or go mad trying to customise to actually use. Form handlers, whole classes for what would be a single handler method in a modern framework. The wacky build and packaging stuff. And then whole commerce layer of it. Pipelines where the majority of the steps are about doing cleanup and normalisation that's only necessary because of how weak ATG's data model is, and the real commerce value could have been a single 20-line function, and adding your own stages becomes and exercise in boilerplate-smithing. Catalogue maintenance, which you have to run sometimes, because apparently it's too hard to just keep the database consistent. Scenarios, the businessperson-usable customisation tool that isn't, in practice, usable by businesspeople!

dbrater 7y ago

While I know Oracle thrives off unearned reputation, (and that Ms SQL is a seriously underrated product outside of enterprises)- I refuse to believe that 3 ms-sql servers were equivalent to 20 oracle's. You must have lost something .