It would take a stadium just to hold the egos of Scott McNeely and Larry Ellison? (I'm not sure that even Larry Ellison's ego can fit in 3Com park by itself...)

While it makes a lot of business sense, I think it probably doesn't work culturally. Both companies teach their zealotness at a very high order, and the result will be something like "you mean we gotta work with THOSE guys"?

I think the industry will likely consolidate and the Sun/Oracle combo makes some serious sense.

But, my experience has been that most companies end up making mergers that make no sense at all. HP/Q isn't all that bad, probably better than the Novell blunders of the mid-late 1980s or the DEC blunders of about the same time.

Funny, many of the technologies that Novell bought are worth more than Novell, after they sold them off to others.

The insane PHB "we've got to get it from a single source" madness will probably drive Oracle/Sun together, and Sybase, HQ/Q, BEA, and Borland somewhere. But maybe we all can teach our friendly PHB's that best of breed is really the best way to approach projects and maybe by some luck or fate, they'll listen.

Then these companies can maybe focus on their core competencies. LIKE BUILDING A REALLY GOOD RELATIONAL DATABASE AND SUPPORTING IT AND NOT TRYING TO SELL ME A BUNCH OF INTERNET CRAP THAT DOESN'T WORK AND THAT I'M GOING TO REDO ANYWAY!

Sorry 'bout that. Good tools, good processes, good fundamentals, good programmers = SUCCESS!

Glen Austin