Does Oracle really love Rails?

Good+free IDE: RadRails (Aptana), Netbeans Good+free editors: jEdit, Komodo Edit Commercial IDE: Ruby In Steel, Komodo IDE

Most of them are running on Win/Linux/Mac. Macs and TextMate are fancy but not required to do ruby development.

'teki321' - I guess I should have stated that my whole second paragraph was my attempt at sarcasm. It goes without saying that most Rails devs (or at least the vocal ones) use textmate/Macs. (Perhaps they're all PPC though...)

If Oracle is trying to appeal to the vocal rails devs, they aren't doing a good job, since you can't connect to their main application on the MacTel platform (unless you use java... which is a 2nd class citizen on said platform). I personally really don't care what people use to develop rails apps and that wasn't the point of this post. The point was that Oracle is moving very slow to get c level drivers working on MacTel..... And if the drivers were Open Source I could do something about that rather than post to a long thread in the developer network that doesn't appear to make much difference to decision makers at Oracle.....

Of course, if you're using Rails, there's little point in using anything besides SQLite (or maybe MySQL) since, according to DHH, databases are just "hashes in the sky" and don't really need advanced features. It'd be a bit like putting an Itanium in a four-function pocket calculator. Also, since the framework handling more than a single request at a time is an outright waste of programmer productivity, really just a flat text file would probably scale just fine (Mongrel could serialize access to it for ultimate performance).

That aside, I'd agree that the words "Oracle" and "open source" in the same paragraph usually lead to helpless rofling. But of course, so do the words "Apple" and "open source". Tit for tat, say I.

Cliff - Good points. I like that DHH ruffles the feathers, though I don't necessarily agree with all his points. Competition at all levels is good and Rails is providing competition for many. So kudos to Rails for that.

Apple arguably tries to lock one in more than most companies. They have little to no open source story (other than leaching). Admittedly, they contribute to gcc, webkit and ???, but it seems that the Steve-O Reality Distortion Field likes to make it appear that everything comes directly out of Cupertino. Little recognition of Open Source or the shoulders they are standing on. At least MS is openly discussing open source (and even submitted their shared source license for OSI approval). I should note that said Mactel laptop was not mine.

Oracle on the other hand plays to be the best friend of open source (and really this argument has little to do with open source itself, because neither mactel nor oracle db is open source), but appears to not be listening to at least one of the communities they are trying to reach out to. I just don't see why it's taking so long to support MacTel, obviously there are some inefficiencies in the behemoth.

Sadly the db I'm connecting to is an existing one, and sqllite probably wouldn't be able to satisfy the numerous floating hashes of this schema...

I am the aforementioned "OTN guy" involved in the referenced discussion thread (and there are a couple others actually).

As an insider I can assure you that to say Oracle "appears to not be listening to at least one of the communities they are trying to reach out to" is to mis-assign blame; rather, this is more of a case of a very large ship being nudged into a particular direction.

I do expect a happy ending for all involved - later than we would have hoped, but a happy one nonetheless.

Justin Kestelyn - Thanks for your response and reassurance that this will eventually get worked out. My co-worker with a MacTel machine is moving forward, since we've worked around the issue.

Thanks for your "insider" view.You repeat what I stated in my next sentence after the one you quoted, there are "inefficiencies in the behemoth".

A few suggestions::

• -State on the MacOSX Instant Client download page that it is "PPC ONLY"

• -Release a non-supported, preview, alpha, beta of the Instant Client. Can it really be that hard?

• -Communicate better, listening is one part of communicating

Of course Oracle loves all developer communities (C/C++, Java, PHP, Rails, and so on); how ellse could that be? We are actively contributing to the Ruby OCI extension (this is a recent engagement but we are increasing our headcount in this area). We just had a Ruby on Rails hands-on lab event, as part of the Oracle OPen World APAC in Shanghai. Watch for Ruby on Rails session and hands-on lab, as part of the upcoming Oracle Open World, San Francisco, in November..

The real issue at hand is the support for Oracle Instant Client on Mac/OS; which is a common issue for all languages and frameworks running on Mac/OS. As you can read in the following OTN posting, http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=515188, we are already pressuring our porting teams to make this happen as soon as possible.

Hope this clarifies.

Kuassi Mensah Group Product Manager, Java, JDBC, OCI, PHP, Ruby/Rails Oracle Corporation - http://db360.blogspot.com

'Kuassi Mensah' - Of course you love your developers, developers, developers. We all do. But you haven't really clarified anything that wasn't already said by your colleague Justin. You are just asking for people to be patient. And you are right the point has little to do with Ruby (other than Ruby is a buzzword right now). It has to do with talking 1 year and a half to release Instant Client on MacOSX. I'm glad that you are porting but have trouble believing that it is taking a year and a half. It's also weird that there has to be a decision to support MacOSX (on intel), since you already supported them on PPC?! With Oracle's experience porting/developing running Instant Client on Sparc, Intel and PPC (not to mention Solaris, Windows, Linux, MacOSX), I'm having a hard time believing that it is taking so long. Certification might be another story, but I would venture that 99% of the people requesting Mactel support don't care about that. Release a alpha/beta/developer release/gamma (whatever you want to call it), with no certification and let the users report the bugs if there are any. If you cared about developers you'd give them what they want.

Oh, and update the download page indicating that it is PPC ONLY!

We have updated the Downloads page.

In case it wasn't clear from my comments in the OTN thread that Kuassi linked to, support for a new architecture is a business decision made by high-level management. The decision involves a large number of variables that neither you nor I have full knowledge of.

We appreciate you raising your hand to show that you would like a Mac Intel port - it is only by speaking up that we can evaluate the demand and the requirements.

Justin- Thanks for updating the page!

Chris- If all I can do is raise my virtual hands, then I raise them. (And those of my co-workers).

I am also raising my hands. Vigorously.