Re: Informix vs Oracle, alleged trade secret theft

On 24 Jan 97 at 10:56, Yomama Sophat wrote: > (Referring to the latest www.news.com) > Some questions for discussion: > > 1) Who's in the right? Who knows? But based on previous experience with Oracle, I'd say they rarely occupy the moral high ground... :-) > 2) Who will win in the end? I find it hard to believe that an entire team working on a leading edge technology would be so dissatisfied with one company that they would get through the bulk of the work and then suddenly say: "Hah! I've had enough, let's go to Oracle who will appreciate our efforts more". Oracle isn't known (here anyway) as a company who fawns over its technical employees. So: who will win what? This battle? I suspect Informix. The War? Oracle will probably always be a bigger company, but Informix are damn keen to be the biggest *database* company. > 3) Who's got the better technology? Informix. Unquestionably. On a slightly smaller scale, alright, a *much* smaller scale here in South Africa, a former Oracle bigwig left to join Informix. He says (over a few beers after the sales spiel was finished) that he has no doubt that Informix has better technology. He basically gave the mirror image of what the Orable bods said. It's all marketing bulldooky, anyway! :-) But if you look at Informix's technical strategy, they are attempting to build an open architecture for their engines to allow the integration of new technologies at the core, whereas Oracle still seem to follow the "bolt-on" approach. I would imagine that if Oracle did a total rewrite of their engine, they might be in a position to challenge Informix from a technological perspective, but I can't see it happening soon... Anyway, this is all opinion and perception: the guys using and working for Oracle probably also feel strongly that Oracle is in the right and is better technology and so on and so on... :-) -- Ciao, Billy I'd be in favour of apathy, but I just couldn't be bothered...