Comments on: Balancing Oracle and open source at Orbitz

By: David Mytton

David Mytton — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 22:27:57 +0000

Yep. And if you scroll down that page there is a slideshow which gives some very quick bullet points that are worth checking if you don’t have time to view the video.

By: J Chris Anderson

J Chris Anderson — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:07:02 +0000

For anyone looking for the video, it’s available (with slides) here: http://www.couchbase.com/couchbase-presentations/couchbase-at-orbitz

By: J Chris Anderson

J Chris Anderson — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:06:01 +0000

David,

Frank’s reply should clear this up for most people, but if you want to learn more, the video and slides from Steven Young’s CouchConf talk are available here: http://www.couchbase.com/couchbase-presentations/couchbase-at-orbitz

I’m looking forward to comparing notes with you tomorrow at WebPerfDays. Anyone who wants to bring popcorn is welcome to join us. :) http://webperfdays.org/

By: Frank

Frank — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 05:37:22 +0000

For the record: Couchbase Server 1.8 that Steven was saying they are using at Orbitz in his presentation at CouchConf, does not actually contain any CouchDB.

Couchbase Server 2.0 does contain some technology based on CouchDB but nothing more (for example the entire storage engine was written in C from scratch, but uses similar file format).

Even the frontend, whilst based on memcached, uses a entirely different engine than regular memcache, as it needs to deal with shards and persistence and replication, etc.

So don’t think describing Couchbase Server as memcache+CouchDB is very accurate, the behaviour and performance is really quite different.

On the other point: Naming things is hard 8)

By: justin

justin — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 13:37:08 +0000

Now that Couchcon has happened is Steve Young’s presentation public? Is there any follow up to any of the question’s Cameron asked? Do you guys have any opinion on http://www.actian.com/products/ingres ?

By: AK

AK — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:42:09 +0000

Good call, Cameron.

By: Derrick Harris

Derrick Harris — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 22:29:38 +0000

For what it’s worth, I have asked Orbitz to comment on this debate, and I will update the post accordingly if I get a response.

As I noted to Cameron, the post (and Young’s presentation on which it’s based) is really a look at what Orbitz was doing and what it decided to do based on its internal assessment. It’s not meant to be an analysis of every option it could have undertaken, which would have included other NoSQL databases, as well.

By: Joe Lea

Joe Lea — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 18:33:19 +0000

Have to agree with Cameron here… the “facts” should at least have been qualified with the product versions. Today’s leading In Memory Data Grids stack up very well to NoSQL solutions when it comes to performance, capability and total cost of ownership.

joe lea
IBM WebSphere eXtreme Scale Product Manager
(my own personal views)

By: Derrick Harris

Derrick Harris — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 14:21:29 +0000

Cameron,

Thanks for the comment.

In this case, the only facts that matter w/ regard to performance and open-source strategy are what Orbitz says, as it’s the only one that actually knows.

And as you’ll note, the post isn’t an indictment of Coherence or Oracle, but rather an explanation of the improvements Orbitz said it achieved from switching to open source/NoSQL for some applications. Your comment might help shed some light on why Coherence wasn’t performing up to expectations, but the Oracle-Orbitz relationship is between the two companies.

By: Cameron Purdy

Cameron Purdy — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 03:12:42 +0000

This is simply nonsense, and shame on you for regurgitating this without any fact checking. Orbitz has been running a ***5 year old version*** of Coherence without a maintenance or support contract. Despite that, and at our own cost, several development executives, product managers and product developers from Oracle have traveled to the customer headquarters to meet with Orbitz executives, developers and operational personnel, both to check in on the progress with the existing systems, and to try to understand and fix any misunderstandings that led to Orbitz deciding to drop ongoing maintenance and support after the Oracle acquisition of Tangosol. As far as I can tell, the offers for assistance were declined, and the suggestions for improvements to the application and the operational infrastructure were ignored. I can’t speak for Oracle as a company or for Orbitz, but I know that the product development team, development management and product management have always been willing and ready to help, and have gone out of their way to do so. I’m very proud of our efforts to provide great service to Orbitz.

Coherence is a great product, and it’s only getting better. Thousands of companies use it successfully in production for many of the highest scale systems in the world, and it’s backed by a brilliant and dedicated team. Next time, you need to get your facts straight before you post nonsense.

Peace,

Cameron Purdy
(An employee of Oracle, but writing my own personal views.)