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Oracle, Sun Offer to Lead You Out of Microsoft Jungle

Oracle Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. think you’ve made a big mistake if you’ve built your infrastructure around Microsoft products. And, of course, they’re willing to help you correct that mistake.

Oracle announced Friday that it’s holding a series of seminars on using Oracle Migration Workbench to move from Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 and 7.0, running on Windows NT or 2000, to Oracle8i running on Sun Solaris.

In typically humble fashion, an Oracle press release called the seminars an “effort to bring migration relief to Microsoft developers.”

The seminar starts Wed., Dec. 6, and will “focus on the technical aspects of making the transition from low-end database running on Windows NT to the most trusted, scalable, high-performance platform for e-business: Oracle 8i on Sun Solaris.”

Microsoft, of course, might have their own opinion on whether SQL is a “low-end database.” Oracle databases have traditionally outperformed their SQL counterparts, but that gap has been narrowing in recent benchmark tests, including one where SQL 2000 performed better than the latest Oracle version. Those results have been questioned by some, and ridiculed by Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, but they do show that the distance between the two is closing. -- Keith Ward

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

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