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Wow, don't hold back on your thoughts. :-)

I've long suspected that Oracle made and sold solutions that fit this description.

Not made, acquired. WebCenter was acquired. Siebel was acquired. WebLogic was acquired. Java was acquired. The only product they've ever built was their flagship RDBMS which was unbeatable for so long and still fills a niche no one else can really compete with.

> The only product they've ever built was their flagship RDBMS

Which relied on cloning IBM's SQL implementation back in the day. Odd to see them now arguing APIs should be proprietary...

> still fills a niche no one else can really compete with.

Not really true. DB2 will do everything Oracle DB does, and more (12c is only now adding the multitenant capabilities that DB2 has had for a long time). IBM don't do as good a job of marketing it, though.

Yes, their RDMBS is expensive, but at least it's good.

Even still, it still has some stupid things going on, like what's a VARCHAR2? And having to use an outer query to get ROWNUM to work when there's an ORDER BY clause.

VARCHAR was so great it needed a sequel. I can't wait for VARCHAR3.

To not pass judgement is to be unfamiliar with Fatwire. I assure you, his assessment is very fitting.

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