The idea to write a book on Oracle and Open Source was really a response to current trends at that time. In the 1990s I was primarily an Oracle DBA and problem solver for some heavyweight dot-com startups such as Starmedia Inc, Community Connect and NetCreations.

Sun was the hardware of choice but Linux and the accompanying low cost of running Apache servers was quickly gaining popularity . Inevitably, Oracle would soon cross with open source technology and as DBAs day-to-day work would increasingly involve Perl, Python and home-rolled stuff.

Together with Andy Duncan, we approached O’Reilly Media to write a book about these trends that would be an aid to others working with Oracle and open source platforms.

In the years that followed, Sun would hemorrhage from the inside as their customers left for commodity hardware in droves. Even their biggest partner Oracle left them for meaner profits on Linux.

Today we’re witnessing a similar trend of commoditization with the cloud exemplified by Amazon Web Services. Now the question is whether MySQL and Linux will do the same thing to Oracle as startups on the bleeding edge of tech leave Oracle for the on-demand convenience and power of Open Source relational database of MySQL?