Re: Informix vs Oracle, alleged trade secret theft

Let me chime in here with my two bits for what its worth since I may (or may not :) ) something of value to add. I'm going to try to keep this reply to c.d.i.--we'll see how successful I am at doing that. In preparation for a book I just finished writing for InformixPress on ODS, (to be published late spring - save your pennies now), I had the opportunity to interview Gary at some length. What was intended to be a very general conversation quickly tuned into a very detailed discussion about the history of Informix' technology and how it compared to Oracle, Sybase, and Ingres and how ODS even came to be. It was a very interesting story -- especially since he explained what Oracle would have to do to fix their product. The transcript of the conversation -- and the editted version that is to appear in the book, are now in the hands of the legal beagles so we'll see what happens. If there is an Appendix C in the book then you're in for a treat. Jeffrey J Berkowitz <jjb@netcom.com> wrote: > Kelley is the sort of guy who is most comfortable in > a small-group, roll-up-your-sleeves engineering lab environment. He is > also a person who is willing to take big organizational and personal > risks to establish the kind of environment he prefers. I can validate that based on our conversation. > it's not safe to conclude that this will have either a major > impact on Informix or a major impact on Oracle. Kelley's ability to > have a big impact on Informix was due in a significant way to the > fact that Informix was ripe for it. But now both Oracle and Informix > are huge organizations primarily answerable to their enterprise > customers, not easily affected by clever ideas coming from a lab. As far as the Informix piece is concerned, that is probably true. Except for a couple of pieces of technology, ODS is where Gary and his team had originally designed it to be. The pieces that are left do not require someone with his level of expertise. As far as the Oracle part is concerned, he could have a major impact if he were to fix what he said was broken in their product. It would be in keeping with his employment history as well. > >Eleven people in one mass defection! I am curious as to what Oracle had to > >offer to get the Informix folks to move. How about the opportunity to continue working with one of the best minds in the database world and to pull a *major* database vendor's back-end out of the fire and restructure it so it will work? Sounds like a challenge to me. I'm sure the $$ were good too. The fact/rumor that they might have approached MS and were turned down should be an indication of the foresight and technical prowess MS intends to bring to the database world -- marketing pitches not withstanding. Carlton ______________________________________________________________________ Carlton Doe "It's not *over* until I win!" DBA Resources, Inc. -- Les Brown Salt Lake City, UT carlton@iiug.org http://www.iiug.org dbaresrc@xmission.com http://www.xmission.com/~dbaresrc carlton@errin.dbaresrc.com PGP key: finger -l dbaresrc@xmission.com