Thursday, January 8, 2009

Oracle licensing explained (by my bro)

I work for a company that sells software. Our flagship product is the Database. Licensing a database is a little complicated (as perceived by our customers!). This is how it's done.

We take the hardware specs of the server on which is database is to be installed i.e. number of processors, number of cores & the brand of CPU. The calculation is done as follows:

(number of processors) x (number of cores) x (licensing factors)

where,
1. factors depend on the brand of CPU i.e. Intel, AMD, UltraSPARC etc.
2. user minimums & number of sockets to be taken into consideration depending on the database edition.

Last week, my brother (who heads the Infrastructure and DCO Division at Panasonic) wanted some Oracle database licensing options for a new project he is undertaking. I explained the licensing model to him and how the calculation is done.

Yesterday on our way to work, we had the following conversation:

Me: Hey, what about those database licenses you inquired about?
Bro: Oh yes, do you know how Oracle is licensed on virtual servers?
Me: Hmm...I'll have to look that up. Haven't come across any such requirements yet.
Bro: Yeah. Let me know. Probably, we'll need to take the square root of the inverse of the processors, then take factors and integrate it and take the third derivative of the limit of the function at infinity, differentiate it and do a Fourier transform of that!!!!!

LOL

Edited to add: If anyone has any questions on Oracle licensing, please leave a comment on my other blog: http://logicalobscurity.wordpress.com. Thanks.

15 comments:

mindspace said...

haha ...lol....hope oracle licensing ppl dont read this post and apply this :)

aShyCarnalKid said...

Mind blowing man . Literally . Your brother sounds like Math Guru .

Masood said...

Amit (under Tara's ID :p) - Yes, hope they don't read this or else we are seriously doomed.

Kislay - Yeah. As soon as he completed that statement, my jaw fell to the floor!!! And then I burst out laughing!
Math Guru? Well he was always good at Maths but him recalling all that was unbelievable!

mindspace said...

hey :( now this is TARA. no wonder u guessed it was amit earlier, kyuki mere palley to kutch nahi pada.. U guys sound so techie...wow... cool haan.

ss said...

Wow!!! I didn't know my random musings would earn blog-o-sphere real estate.

:-)

Masood said...

Tara - What techie...don't you remember anything from your high school maths?

Sharjil - Ha! The man of the moment, Ladies and gentlemen, Sharjil Salem!

It's gems like these that truly deserve it.

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