OTN TechBlog

Has everyone seen the new slick UI for MetaLink's Software Configuration Manager? Thanks to Laurent Schneider for blogging about it; wasn't aware of it myself.

This looks like a pretty big step for customers who want to be hands-on about their environment - via info about applied patches and TAR status, as well as by getting advice for best practices. Very nice!

I stumbled upon a stupefying post from Sean McCown yesterday, he of the "Database Underground" blog at InfoWorld.com. Sean (a SQL Server user apparently), claims, for example:

Oracle is still living in the old days where
everything is a good ole boys club...You just can't afford to
do business like that anymore. You have to open up your community and
start programs to encourage your best people to help and teach.

and:

If you take any 10 DBAs from each side [meaning, Oracle vs. SQL Server] and ask
them to look up a solution to a problem on their platform, the SQL guys
will find the answer much faster than the Oracle guys will.

and:

So the real difference between these two
platforms is community. Microsoft has gone to great lengths to build a
community and really support it. And Oracle is still doing business the
old way.

I replied immediately, to the effect: Sean, I guess you haven't been paying attention: otn.oracle.com, forums.oracle.com, wiki.oracle.com, blogs.oracle.com, mix.oracle.com - hello?

Happy to say that the community agreed with me, having flooded Sean with similar comments. In a follow-up post, Sean replies:


I got a lot of comments, but even more emails, and the results are
mixed. ....One thing I'm finding out is how
passionate the Oracle people are about their DB.

and:

Well, going from my comment stats I'd say that
there are plenty of people out there who say I'm wrong and who are very
certain that Oracle's community is really on the ball. And there are
those who don't. So what I can gather from this is that maybe Oracle
hasn't done enough to get the word out on all of their resources...I research things for a living basically. And if
I've had problems finding some of these resources, then I know others
have too.

Which leads me to the point of my post. Do you agree with Sean? Are these resources "hard to find"? And if so, what can we do to address that issue?

It's worth mentioning as a companion to the fact that Oracle has made XQilla XQuery code available under the Apache 2.0 License, that the press release used to announce this news is a revelation.

No bluster, no fluff, no clear-as-mud language  - just facts. Look, even Matt Asay likes it!