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Oracle cites 'force majeure' to shield itself on controversial data center

155 points · 153 comments · simonpure

  1. giancarlostoro · · focus · HN ↗
    I really don't get who keeps using Oracle outside of Java, and how they make their money, must be some legacy contracts or something, but Oracle has always been customer hostile, from all the things I've heard, they sound like a ransomware company (idk if they still do it, but they'd sell you the database, then "audit you" and if you used anything that wasn't in compliance, fine you, until you converted that to Oracle DB too or whatever wild stuff). I just don't get it. I get even less how its execs are okay running what could be a much more successful company so poorly. You can change Oracle for the better and become even more profitable if you change how you do business.

    Take Java as a solid example, they removed JavaFX from the core of Java, which made everyone think JavaFX was dead, recently they started providing enterprise support for JavaFX, which signals its production ready, but, who wants to trust Oracle? I sure don't. I can use C# for free without any of that baggage, and if I get all sorts of stable options for a GUI, and with Avalonia (and Uno?) I can run my GUI on any OS.

    1. joshuaissac · · focus · HN ↗
      > they removed JavaFX from the core of Java

      You can still use OpenJFX with OpenJDK, can't you?

      1. Sindisil · · focus · HN ↗
        Use, yes. Or with pretty much any JDK. It just isn't included as part of the JDK like AWT & Swing anymore.
    2. pwg · · focus · HN ↗
      > I really don't get who keeps using Oracle

      "Enterprise" is still very much in the camp of "using Oracle". Which is likely how they survive despite being so customer unfriendly. "Enterprise" users are simply using what "the enterprise" purchased and have little choice in the matter.

      1. zahlman · · focus · HN ↗
        Is there a list somewhere of major "enterprises" in this position? I've always kinda wondered how Java keeps its edge over C# in the TIOBE rankings.
        1. Sindisil · · focus · HN ↗
          TIOBE rankings are meaningless.
          1. zahlman · · focus · HN ↗
            What do you suggest instead, then?
            1. robertlagrant · · focus · HN ↗
              Not worrying about language rankings.
            2. giancarlostoro · · focus · HN ↗
              What a coworker did when he was starting college back some decades, he asked where all the COBOL jobs were, the teacher got very angry, so he dropped out and went to a different university, where they were teaching Delphi / VB which definitely had a better job market. So you might never have a "perfect" number, but at least locally, you can kind of figure out what local employers are hiring for, which is usually what you'd care most about anyway. I think we've reached a point where unless you're doing something specialized, for the most part programming language choice is about developer familiarity these days.
        2. NearAP · · focus · HN ↗
          'Enterprises' use Oracle's ERP applications. Oracle's ERP covers many facets of industry such as HCM, Finance, Procurement, Property Management, Oil & Gas, etc.
      2. giancarlostoro · · focus · HN ↗
        Every enterprise company I've worked for that used Oracle either completely migrated from it or is / was in the process of doing so, which is why I asked my question. I don't see startups lining up to do Oracle either, not in the way old businesses used to.
    3. rhipitr · · focus · HN ↗
      I’ve been on some teams where some SQL devs can do some non intuitive things with SQL (particularly some of the enterprise features from Oracle). Not saying they were the right decisions but I do think some processes get knitted to these enterprise features and it’s painful to walk back later
      1. dam_jackalopes · · focus · HN ↗
        I've had this same experience with Oracle shops. I've been in data roles for most of the last 20 years and it'd still give me pause to take work on an Oracle platform if only because they're doing their own thing so often.
    4. galleywest200 · · focus · HN ↗
      My company uses Oracle BRM to bill for millions of phone calls each month. It would be such a crazy upheaval project to move from that.
      1. ginko · · focus · HN ↗
        Millions per month is tens per minute. That doesn't seem like all that much to me?
        1. sophacles · · focus · HN ↗
          There's likely an awful lot of tricky logic in the queries, stored procedures, etc. Dealing with taxes (very location and situation depending), details of any given customer's plan, equipment charges, etc etc for lines going back for decades... this stuff is hard to migrate correctly. It's not necessarily about qps.
          1. htrp · · focus · HN ↗
            why is business logic embedded in the queries?
            1. mejutoco · · focus · HN ↗
              Stored procedures encode business logic
            2. sophacles · · focus · HN ↗
              I don't know specifically, I'm not the person who posted about that database. But it happens all the time, even in 2026 at good tech companies.

              It tends to come from a couple of common places...

              * efficiency - triggers, stored procedures and constraints can often speed up throughput in terms of transactions per second by reducing the number of round trips from the application to the db. I know above i mentioned its not about qps necessarily, but a telephone billing db probably includes records of calls and txts and so on, which across millions of people adds up.

              * Older architecture patterns didn't put a single service in front of a database for that service. Instead theres a single database for the company, or for a function within the company, and many programs and services interacted with that database. In such an architecture, stored procedures and triggers are really useful for some business logic, to ensure consistency between various systems... Need to update tax rules for one state? Just donit in the db instead of the sales pos system at the stores and the billing system and the phone operator sales system and the website and the gateway for 3rd party sellers, etc. there's a certain logic to it too... This data is fundamental to the business and has lots of rules associated with it, those make sense to place together - the rules change independently of the systems accessing those rules, and over the life of the company those rules tied to laws and accounting may last far far longer than any given pos system or website rewrite.

            3. everforward · · focus · HN ↗
              The data tier is one of the lowest tiers in the stack (for bigcorps with centralized DBs), and changes bubble up the stack. Change an API and a few upstreams have to change. Change the core DB and _everything_ has to change.

              That makes the schema calcify, and the DB becomes the most stable format of the data. I've worked more than one place where "upgrade the core DB between major versions" was a multi-quarter effort.

        2. kjs3 · · focus · HN ↗
          It's never hard when you've never done it.
    5. robertlagrant · · focus · HN ↗
      It's only relatively recently (in the lifespan of large companies) that OSS alternatives have come along that can do much more of what Oracle can do. Oracle was miraculous for a long time. It was also a huge pain to operate (source: I know people who've operated it), particularly in its RAC configuration, but if you could operate it you could run a bank and rely pretty well on Oracle being rock solid.
      1. giancarlostoro · · focus · HN ↗
        That's fair, I'm not trying to knock on them for their tech, I'm sure some of it is solid, though Java felt like it hit a wall for years (only in like 2023 did it finally start catching up to C#... and remember Kotlin was made specifically because Java was just so... behind on so much).
        1. robertlagrant · · focus · HN ↗
          Oh, agreed. I'm only talking about their database.
          1. giancarlostoro · · focus · HN ↗
            In all fairness, the JVM is insanely optimized, and .NET and the JVM are neck and neck, but language feature wise C# felt nicer to work with. I guess its a blessing in disguise, it allowed C# to gain a lot of usage. :)
            1. robertlagrant · · focus · HN ↗
              I agree about the JVM. I think the big difference between C# and Java is just that C# has allowed breaking changes, and so has improved various things at the language level. Java hasn't really.
    6. kakacik · · focus · HN ↗
      You don't have experience from corporate environment. Oracle is very much present, alive and kicking there, in 1000 and 1 little or big applications, sometimes even out of convenience and cost (is you have just 1 DBA team supporting oracle, adding even 1 postgres to production system could be a cost nightmare to support and manage.

      And SQL DBs are not going anywhere in next few decades.

      1. ebiester · · focus · HN ↗
        Zipcar started in 2000/2001 on Oracle and relied heavily on stored procedures, particularly in billing (as SaaS didn't exist back when it started and was a bad fit for a long time). It took an entire rewrite of the system to get off of Oracle.
        1. kjs3 · · focus · HN ↗
          I've heard the exact same thing about DB2, Sybase and Terradata over the years. It's not some uniquely Oracle issue.
      2. giancarlostoro · · focus · HN ↗
        > You don't have experience from corporate environment.

        Thank you for redefining my entire career, in fact, everywhere I've worked at as a developer, if they ever used Oracle either migrated completely away from it or are in / were in the process of migrating from it, including Fortune 500 companies. Which is why I asked what I asked. I'm genuinely curious.

        1. flippingheck · · focus · HN ↗
          Could it be selection bias?

          Perhaps you and employers that happen to stick with Oracle aren't looking for the same thing?

          1. giancarlostoro · · focus · HN ↗
            Possible, but I guess my view comes from: Usually startups don't line up for Oracle as far as I can tell, and new companies don't line up for Oracle (I'm separating this from startups because you can have a brick and mortar that's modernizing and bringing tech in-house), so if their customer base keeps leaving and they are only retaining some of their customers... It's not really looking good from where I'm standing. To be extremely fair, I think Oracle has drastically more potential than what they do today, and could even become extremely dominant, but they're not playing those cards at all, and its kind of a shame. They've got plenty of funds to make the JDK and programming in general more interesting, and they would stand to profit from it since who wouldnt want to hire Oracle consultants on their tech if they need key consultants? I know people pay top dollar for Microsoft consultants to get their startups going.
            1. flippingheck · · focus · HN ↗
              Yeah, I'd guess Oracle DB isn't attractive to startups, and that's probably a long term risk for them.

              There is plenty of $$$ at the top, at the moment.

              Oracle Cloud offers them some long term strategy.

    7. coredog64 · · focus · HN ↗
      Oracle is more than Java and an RDBMS. You cannot throw a rock without hitting a Fortune 500 company running PeopleSoft and/or the Oracle ERP.
      1. toomuchtodo · · focus · HN ↗
        FBI was breached via PeopleSoft. Do you think more companies would leave it if they were breached too?

        <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.404media.co&#x2F;we-hacked-the-fbi-hackers-say-they-have-data-on-all-fbi-employees&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.404media.co&#x2F;we-hacked-the-fbi-hackers-say-they-h...

        <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;09&#x2F;22&#x2F;hacking-group-shinyhunters-claims-it-breached-the-fbi-stole-agents-and-applicants-data&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;09&#x2F;22&#x2F;hacking-group-shinyhunters...

        1. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

          [deleted]

        2. halJordan · · focus · HN ↗
          The answer is clearly and resoundingly no. Honestly don&#x27;t know how you typed that question out with the current state of corporate (ir)responsibility towards cybersecurity.
          1. toomuchtodo · · focus · HN ↗
            Because we’re going to get to find out.

            <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cloud.google.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;topics&#x2F;threat-intelligence&#x2F;shinyhunters-renewed-mass-exploitation-campaign-targeting-oracle-peoplesoft" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cloud.google.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;topics&#x2F;threat-intelligence&#x2F;shi...

        3. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

          [deleted]

    8. RobotToaster · · focus · HN ↗
      They get enterprise and government contracts because of kick-backs and revolving doors.
    9. jjrjej · · focus · HN ↗
      My friend you don’t understand the world of business..

      Btw I hate oracle but they’ve got their business model down to a T.

    10. bitwize · · focus · HN ↗
      Oracle Database is still the gold standard for data in an enterprise setting. Postgres is great, but it doesn&#x27;t have the clustering or replication capabilities, or support, that Oracle does.

      When you&#x27;re talking about business, the software itself doesn&#x27;t really matter at all. Accountability is everything. There has to be a throat you can choke, an ass you can drag onto the carpet, when it fails. That is the reason why Oracle persists as an organization: they assume accountability for the data storage layer, freeing their clients to worry about other things.

      This also has implications for developers grousing about &quot;being an accountability sink&quot; for AI-generated code. Being an accountability sink is the business and as Larry has demonstrated, quite lucrative indeed. Developing the code is a side effect that can now be done close to 100% by machine.

    11. dkuntz2 · · focus · HN ↗
      I think all their recent layoffs show that nobody uses oracle, and the data centers for open ai are their last best hope for future revenue.

      Nobody picks oracle anymore, and everybody who&#x27;s using oracle wishes they were off it and is working on projects to detach themselves from paying oracle heaps of money for software that&#x27;s no better than open source alternatives.

      1. ternaryoperator · · focus · HN ↗
        &gt; nobody uses oracle

        Their quarterly statements say otherwise. The layoffs are not a function of declining sales, but of cutting back to conserve cash for AI build out.

    12. efficax · · focus · HN ↗
      oracle&#x27;s database is still a good product, with a lot of features that don&#x27;t have analogs in open source db products. You can live without them, but still, it&#x27;s a nice database.
      1. jeltz · · focus · HN ↗
        Good product ... not really. It has some nice features but it is user hostile, buggy and with a bad manual. Running the Oracle database was quite shocking, surprisingly low quality.
    13. 229-T · · focus · HN ↗

      [dead]

    14. mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
      Oracle is a law business in the business of getting contracts from customers and then forcing the customers to pay money.

      The substance of the contracts is an afterthought.

    15. sellmesoap · · focus · HN ↗
      Government contracts, size and momentum, they&#x27;re pretty famous for being ruthless on the upsell and counting licenses very carefully. They use their size to absorb other entities (like people soft who let the FBI&#x27;s data go missing onto the dark web just recently [1]) they all uses databases and need datacenters. The government needs to manage big sets of data for whatever reason, Oracle is essential to that mission, bingo-bango too big to fail! [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49805278">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=49805278
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