Thursday, December 4, 2008

20081204.1505 Tooting One's Own Horn


In their documentation Oracle comes on like an insecure lover, constantly reaffirming their position as your object of affection and jealously playing mind-games to keep anyone else from attracting your attention.

The utter saturation of their technical information with marketing spin is cumbersome to parse through when you are just trying to learn something.

Here is an example: When you go to the web page console for the Oracle Application Server Service Registry (and again does EVERY product need to start with the word 'Oracle'?) right at the top of the page we have this copy:

"Oracle Application Server Service Registry is the most complete and proven business services registry providing a foundation for the governance and lifecycle management of your business services. The Registry provides you with what you need to obtain enterprise-wide insight, control and economic leverage of your organization's business services assets. Much more than just a UDDI registry, the Registry captures and makes discoverable business service descriptions into a centrally managed, reliable and searchable location, becoming the system of record for your business services Oracle Application Server Service Registry provides two user interfaces. "

You would think that by using this product - which amounts to an overblown list of web services that in spite of performance bottlenecks, still puts the database at the center of the universe - you would suddenly get all kinds of magical "economic leverage" to throw around.
Is this really necessary? Are they training the IT staff to just take them at face value & repeat the mantra that Oracle Knows Best? When I see statements like "most complete and proven" I have to ask the question "according to whom?"