LiquidFusion - Any Takers?

Just after I found out about the Sun's purchase of MySQL, the news about Oracle's acquisition of BEA filtered through.

Can this be anything other than consolidation within an aging market sector. An indication that the "one size fits all" monolithic messaging middleware /  application server era is in its twilight years?

Perhaps OSGi and SCA will, in due course, be seen as key technology enablers allowing the shift away from costly monolith middleware?

Sun no Longer Afraid?

I've just been contacted by an old friend asking for my thoughts w.r.t Sun's MySQL announcement. Certainly news to me! Yet, a quick check of Sun's front page and Jonathan's blog, just to be sure, confirms the story.

So initial response was surprise. Sun had previously purchased an excellent database technology and then proceeded to silently kill it by burying it behind medico middleware. Anyone remember Clustra? True Clustra was a new market entrant whereas MySQL has massive market adoption. 

My interpretation was always that Sun were to concerned about the Oracle relationship - and specifically the Oracle on Sparc business line - to risk having any in-house product that remotely looked like a relational database. 

If true - that would imply the  revenue stream is no longer as important as it use to be? 

Whatever, it seems to me like a bold and interesting move. Far more so than the StorageTek acquisition (still don't understand that one). This also follows on from Lustre; to my mind an interesting technology motivated acquisition.