Did you hear the rumors that SFDC offered itself to Oracle? Maybe it makes sense for Oracle and SFDC, but does it make sense for developers, the community, and customers?

Tom Foremski says that the two businesses are easily integrated because they’re based on standards. Maybe SFDC actually uses HTML, but APEX is far from an industry standard. How does that help the developer community and ultimately the customers / end-users?

Of course I am an open source advocate and a devoted MySQL user, but Oracle is a stellar database that scales. As a developer and also as the Advanced Support Manager for Sugar, I often find myself working with enterprise organizations that are Oracle shops. So why get stuck with APEX when you can have REAL open standards and flexibility?

If you’re going to develop for Sugar and you’re going to use Oracle - I *HIGHLY* recommend Zend Core for Oracle. It makes installation and maintenance and fine-tuning SOOO easy. My favorite part is that it’s FREE!

I’ve also learned that once you’ve installed Zend Core for Oracle, it would behoove you to upgrade to the latest oci8_client that comes with PHP. PHP 5.2.x+ has the best oci8 client from my personal experience.

What do you think about Oracle and its future? What tips have you learned as a PHP developer and from working with Oracle?