Oracle's Africa dealings under FBI, SEC, DoJ investigation Oracle is reported to be under investigation by the US authorities for breaking federal anti-bribery laws in Africa. The FBI field office in Washington, fraud prosecutors in the Justice Department's criminal division, and attorneys for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are reported to be looking into sales of Oracle …
> And all the information about this is contained in Oracle RDBMS to which you need to run a SQL report created by an Oracle process to get at it
Huh? What an ignorant statement to make.
The client supplies the SQL source code. Be that BO, Cognos or whatever BI or reporting client system used. An Oracle server processes "compiles" the SQL code into a cursor and executes it. The output which is then consumed by the client process.
Standard client-server. Standard architecture used in RDBMS systems.
Or did you simply want to raise the bar of the definition of an El Reg commentard?
"Oracle had been obliged under contract with the US General Services Administration to tell the body when commercial discounts on software had improved and to extend them to government customers. The DoJ said Oracle had misrepresented its true commercial sales practices – meaning government customers received deals on worse terms than customers in the private sector."
Being on IT Industry in Brazil for several years, I am always shocked to see Oracle deals in Government agencies here.
Meanwhile, private customers get up to 90% discount on license fees, Government pays full list price with 0% discount without any chance to other database vendors have a decent competition because of the Database "standards".
I am really really pissed off, because they are paying Oracle with people taxes, that includes me.
Bribery here??? Who knows?
Regards!
PS: Anonymous for obvious reasons.
"The DoJ said Oracle had misrepresented its true commercial sales practices – meaning government customers received deals on worse terms than customers in the private sector."
If Oracle was busing empty fuel drums in circles through Iraq and then bill 200 USD/km, no-one would notice.
But a known overly expensive shrink-wrapped EULA with a download link? Well, sure, we want the best deal on THAT.
Is a real pain doing business in the US
If you sell to a government body you have to prove you haven't sold to anyone else for less - so no discounts to schools, universities etc.
But every government sale costs you 2-10x as much as a regular sale, there is a mountain of paperwork to do, a big list of approvals to get and it takes forever to get paid.
Then you have 10x as many support calls because their systems are so badly configured or locked down that they can never install anything, then they turnover staff and admins so often you start again in 6months with the new batch trying to use it.
The you have a set of users who are 'government employee grade' IQ
That's why the government ends up employing so many consultancies - because nobody will deal directly with them anymore
Indeed, it always amuses me when I see the knots that Yank businesses tie themselves in whilst attempting to look whiter-than-white on their foreign dealings. It is a simple fact - in certain countries, if you want the business, you will have to pay someone for it. Call it consultancy fees, call it charitable donations, local employment schemes, development fund donations, whatever, they are all just basic bribes to get deals. It seems the crime is not in the doing, but in the getting caught. In this case, it looks like Snoreacle have been caught taking advantage of the US administration, so they probably went looking for something to beat Larry with in return. Larry obviously never heard the advice that you should never take a dump in your own backyard.
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