I don't think I really want to know, it would only add to my cynicism. It's
really an interesting racket that they've put together with their latest
release. It's pretty much just a really garbled repackaging of the standard
Apache/Orion/LDAP stuff with an Oracle database on the backend.

The install is pretty painful and my cynical side says that they made it painful
on purpose. They make it just different enough though so that it would really
save time to spend time on the phone or bring in a consultant. I'm thinking of
half a dozen people I worked with in St. Louis who would directly have one or
two of the skills to install it easily from scratch, but no one person I can
think of would have every skill. You have to have knowledge of the apache mod
stuff to do the LDAP plug in (I don't have that). If you don't have the LDAP
plug-in, nothing else will work -- nice little easter egg there. Nevermind
YAGNI and that most people who will use these probably have their own table of
users that they will use for the application and completely ignore the LDAP, but
that's another rant... The other thing is the app server, I know it well
because Orion was my development server for about a year, but DBAs have a tough
time with Orion, so even a really good DBA will probably need some help getting
Orion configured. Oracle the database sort of speaks for itself - easy to
install dummy style - takes a good DBA to get in good form (I can do dummy
Oracle but out of my league good Oracle).

From the consulting/marketing perspective its a really nice install, because it
isn't so terrible that will alienate anybody, but it isn't complete and easy
enough so that you won't at least consider giving Oracle a call to ask for a
consultant...especially if you work for a big company and have more money than
time.

Tim

Bob Lee <crazybob@...> wrote:
Are the development tools and the technical rep. worth whatever Oracle charges
over Orion's $1500/server (note server as opposed to CPU)? ;) What does Oracle
charge anyway?


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