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This year, Larry Ellison had an accident because he was riding a bicycle too fast, and then he had a plastic surgery, which was a small break, so he had time to think about it. Pen, fun, and www.biquge.info

HE COULDN'T DO IT WITHOUT THINKING DEEPLY – ORACLE NEARLY WENT BANKRUPT IN 1990 BECAUSE OF A SALES STRATEGY ERROR.

However, in the final analysis, the reason is that the industry is too competitive now.

To cite an embarrassing example, Ashton Tate, the operator of the once troika of spreadsheets, word processing, and databases within databases on the IBM-PC platform - Ashton Tate has collapsed.

The general ins and outs are: DBase's rolling financial resources have attracted copycats, and they are very good, such as FoxBase, which has eaten away at the market that should belong to DBase; The incomparably large Ashton-Tate company tried its best to warn that the acquisition was ineffective, and in the end it could only start a lawsuit; Unexpectedly, the court ruled that DBase had infringed the copyright of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was not protected; Ashton-Tate, which had been in business for almost a decade, was cornered, and now DBase has been acquired by Borland.

The competition in the desktop database market is still so fierce, let alone the large database market with higher technology content and greater profit margins.

ORACLE, REWRITTEN IN C, CLAIMS TO RUN ON ALL COMPUTER PLATFORMS. THIS GIMMICK IS CERTAINLY AN EXAGGERATION, AND IT IS IMPOSSIBLE FOR ORACLE TO SUPPORT 100% OF HARDWARE SYSTEMS, BUT IT IS TRUE THAT IT HAS A WIDE RANGE OF APPLICABILITY.

With this, Oracle has developed rapidly for more than ten years, but it has also made enemies everywhere, and Sybase and Informix are very strong opponents.

IN ADDITION, ON IBM'S MAINFRAME AND MINICOMPUTER, ORACLE WANTS TO CHALLENGE IBM'S SUBORDINATE SOLDIER - DB2; On the Fangyuan server, the situation is similar, and Oracle wants to challenge the Zheru EBase, which also belongs to the Tang Sect.

The so-called subordinate soldiers, of course, mean that these hardware systems are very friendly to DB2 or EBase, from technology, to service, and even the most front-end marketing, they have innate advantages, throwing off a big cut from ORACLE.

MOREOVER, IN TERMS OF TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT, ORACLE IS NOT THE BEST IN THE WORLD, AND MARKETING AND SERVICE ARE ITS STRENGTHS.

All in all, the higher the path of ORACLE, the narrower it becomes—Larry Ellison, the boss, must strive to stand at the highest point and think about some "philosophical" questions about the company and even the entire industry in order to find new room for growth; OTHERWISE, ORACLE MAY FACE BANKRUPTCY AGAIN, AND HIS OWN LUXURY LIFE WILL BE LOST.

In Larry Ellison's view, Tang Huan is now doing just that, expanding his territory from the personal computer to the Internet.

To be honest, for Tang Huan's method of throwing out a concept and building an industry, Larry Ellison was both secretly jealous and had to be convinced. Therefore, he took advantage of the time to recuperate from his injuries and studied the World Wide Web carefully, which can be regarded as quite insightful.

Listening to Tang Huan's introduction to the five generations of Fangyuan personal computers, Larry Ellison suddenly had an idea in his heart - the future of the Internet is so powerful, does that mean that access to the terminal is not only in the form of Fangyuan personal computers? Or further, in order to safeguard vested interests, Tang Huan's touting of the five generations of Fangyuan personal computers is itself a mistake in the direction!

Imagine that when the Internet is popularized, all tasks can be submitted to the network center server for centralized processing, and the results can be returned later, while the hardware configuration of the network terminal only needs the CPU, memory and network card, and expensive equipment such as hard disks can be completely eliminated.

This lightweight computer, let's call it a network computer, should be able to squeeze down to $500.

AS FOR THE SOFTWARE SYSTEM, THE NETWORK CENTER SERVER MUST HAVE ITS OWN ORACLE; The client only needs a browser, and even the operating system can be omitted to the maximum. Because, the network computer can be launched through the network, downloaded by the central server to the browser, and then everything is ready.

After this computer application model slowly became clear in his mind, Larry Ellison couldn't help but feel a little excited—he seemed to have found a good card that turned the rules of the game on the way in the existing industry! I don't know if Tang Huan realizes that the Internet he is trying to promote may bury his existing advantages?

Larry Ellison's temperament is similar to that of Steve Jobs, quirky and elusive, but that doesn't stop him from scheming his scheming ideas, ready to go back and plan a little bit more, and then hype up the concept that might allow a network computer to replace a personal computer.

……

Of course, Tang Huan would not have thought that someone would come up with an idea based on the blueprint of the Internet he had described, trying to subvert the existing dominance of Fangyuan's personal computer, after all, there were too many coveters from all sides, and it was really overwhelming.

However, Mr. The richest man has noticed the increasingly acute competition for software companies in the industry at the moment.

At the beginning of the birth of electronic computers, the main task was data processing, so the market demand for databases can be said to be long-lasting. NOW, RELATIONAL DATABASES ACROSS HARDWARE PLATFORMS, WITH ORACLE, SYBASE, AND INFORMIX BEING THE MOST FAMOUS, AND THE MOST CONFLICTING — PHILIP WHITE, THE CEO OF INFORMIX IN MENLO PARK, AND LARRY ERISON, THE CEO OF THE NEIGHBORING ORACLE IN REDWOOD CITY, HAVE EVEN REACHED THE LEVEL OF PERSONAL CONFLICT, OCCUPYING QUITE A DISTINCTIVE PLACE IN THE GOSSIP NEWS OF SILICON VALLEY.

The database market is so lucrative that even Microsoft, which is constantly running for operating systems and office software, has also moved its mind, but unfortunately the technical threshold in this field is not easy to cross.

To this end, Microsoft and Sybase have signed a cooperation agreement on large-scale databases, and the two sides will jointly develop a project called SQL_Server; In terms of desktop databases, Microsoft generously took FoxBase, which can be regarded as a direct one-step approach.

Here's the irony, Ashton Tate was too stingy to take FoxBase, and ended up with a bleak night, selling DBase to Borland instead; Microsoft acquired FoxBase and developed an enhanced version of FoxPro on top of it - and in this way, the historical feud between DBase and FoxBase continued between Borland and Microsoft.

The market competition of these two companies is mainly manifested in programming language tools, especially C/C++ language, plus Zheru, Borland_C/C++, Microsoft_C/C++, Zerone_C/C++, these three major development tools, it is like a three-kingdom killing situation.

Among them, the status of Zerone_C/C++ has always been relatively transcendent, and it has realized the rapid development of visualization and componentization; With the acquisitions of DBase and FoxBase by Borland and Microsoft respectively, the new version of the product will integrate these resources and catch up with Zerone_C/C++ in terms of functionality.

At this year's COMDEX, Borland and Microsoft showed the beta version of the latest programming development tools, and even Microsoft_C/C++ has begun to change its face to Microsoft_Visual_C++.

Tang Huan, who was walking around the COMDEX exhibition hall, saw this scene and asked Anders Hailsberg, who has been in charge of the programming development tools department, "What do you think will be the adaptation of programming languages in the Internet era?" ”

Anders Halesberg replied without hesitation: "The Internet will pull more people in front of the computer, and the level of users will be significantly differentiated, and the number of beginners using Zerone_Delphi-friendly development tools will definitely grow faster than advanced programming tools such as Zerone_C/C++." ”

"In particular, on the basis of the traditional PASAL programming language used in Turbo_PASAL, Zheru has not only developed object-oriented Object_PASAL for Delphi, but also developed scripted PASAL_Script for office software macro languages and dynamic web pages on the World Wide Web, as if there is a trend that has swept the world."

Speaking of this, Anders Halesberg laughed proudly, "Wall Street's financial elite can't do without the spreadsheet tool pioneered by the teacher; In order to better analyze the data, they are now inseparable from PASAL_Script, and even praise it as the most beautiful programming language in the world. ”

"I estimate that as the World Wide Web expands, more and more people will develop websites, and with it, more and more people will master PASAL_Script."

Tang Huan, who was moving forward with his hands, listened carefully to Anders Hailsberg's words, and asked: "Then have you ever thought about how specific this trend that swept the world will be?" ”

Hearing this question, which seemed to have a slightly philosophical overtone, Anders Hellsberg paused slightly. He scratched his head and muttered back, "Specifically...... The code developed by our programming tools runs on every server, every workstation, every desktop, every laptop, every PDA, every home video game console, ......"

"Every TV, every refrigerator, every air conditioner, every mobile phone, every ......car," Tang Huan took over with a smile, "Our programming tools will break out of the traditional territory of computers, and enter those commonplace products that people can't do without in their daily lives, such as home appliances and transportation, and give them technological intelligence." ”

Seeing his disciple's mouth open in surprise, Tang Huan quipped, "What, do you think it's impossible?" ”

"Of course not." Anders Hellsberg, who came to his senses, quickly shook his head, "At least, we are already carrying out similar research and development on TVs, mobile phones, and automobiles. It's just that the teacher's thinking is so broad that I didn't react for a while. ”

Tang Huan bowed slightly, "This can't be blamed for your limited vision, but the technological gap here is daunting." The first problem is the limitation of hardware resources. ”

"The so-called software programming boils down to making full use of the computer's microprocessor and memory resources under the guidance of mathematical algorithms."

"There is borrowing and repaying, and it is not difficult to use it again, but it is in this borrowing and repaying that programmers will inevitably be negligent, resulting in artificial memory leakage, and the probability will increase as the application becomes more and more complicated."

"PASAL_Script has deliberately downplayed the abstraction of data types such as integers and floating-point numbers for the convenience of beginners, and even introduced an object data type that can represent any data type."

"Underneath these appearances, it's the compiler that automates memory reclamation."

"If the programming tools department can carry this forward, then our programming language, into products other than computers, will undoubtedly be much easier to implement."

"The teacher literally opened another window for me." Anders Halesberg exclaimed, "However, we need to design a programming language from scratch - after all, the main feature of C/C++ is the flexibility to manually provision memory resources through memory pointers; The mechanism of PASAL and Object_PASAL is also similar ASAL_Script there is still a long way to go before the real automatic memory reclaim. ”

"It's really a completely new subject." Tang Huan nodded, "To meet the real cross-hardware requirements of a programming language, it is not enough to have a compiler like C language that supports different hardware systems, but it should have a virtual machine that isolates all kinds of differences, and at the same time has functions such as automatic memory garbage collection, distributed, multi-threading, code execution safety, etc." ”

After pointing to this extent, Tang Shoufu glanced at the booth of Sun Microsystems Company that he had just passed by, smiled playfully, and said in his heart - you still honestly sell hardware products such as servers and workstations, the original time and space Java, there is really no need to work hard, who let the advantage of time be on my side. (To be continued.) )