New Oracle Database

NEW ORACLE DATABASE IS "STUPEFYINGLY DULL"

At a packed press conference at industry fair PropellerHeads (held every April in Santa Monica), Larry Ellison unveiled his company's latest marvel - The Oracle 10ix Multi-Clustered Relatational DB Edifice Edition - which he claimed was five times as powerful, four times as stable and three and half times more tedious than its nearest rival.

As the plainly-boxed software package sat on a velvet cushion in front of him, Ellison explained to the stunned audience that his company had attained "unprecedented levels of tedium."

"We all know how boring databases can be," he explained - flipping through Powerpoint slides more or less at random in an effort to stay awake - "but with The Oracle 10ix Multi-Clustered Relatational DB Edifice Edition we've really broken new ground. You might have thought Windows.net was uninteresting. You might have thought XML was uninspiring. Well you wait till one of our sales boys starts talking to you about remotely audited rollback segments. I tell you, it's better than counting sheep!"

[zzzz....] Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has hit back at his long-standing rival Ellison claiming that the latest Windows 7 drivers are "pretty damned tiresome" and pointing out that whereas Oracle issues new software once or twice a year, Microsoft keeps its customers busy throughout the product life-cycle, with a seemingly unending series of updates, patches and bug-fixes "all uniquely soporific".

However, industry commentators agree that this round goes to Ellison, fairly and squarely. "I've got to hand it to him," commented lifelong computer bore Ian Popeck. "I've stayed awake through four hour seminars on practical considerations related detailed diagnostic tools for debugging low-level assembler, but I didn't get more than four pages into the user manual for The Oracle 10ix Multi-Clustered Relatational DB Edifice Edition without beginning to feel my eyelids getting heavy. I've had it for nearly a week now, and I still haven't got past the chapter on data warehousing in a multi-user, multi-system environment. It's quite an achievement."

[zzzz....] But some think that Ellison has gone too far. Professor Hugo Z Hackenbush - whose books on accidents at work "Don't Put Your Head In There: A Study In Stupidity" and "You Won't Be Doing That Again In A Hurry (Or Much Else For That Matter)", regularly top the bestseller lists - told us "I believe that this product is not merely record-breakingly tedious, it's actually dangerously tedious. We've already had reports of one lathe operator who remembered seeing an advertisement for it while at work and is still recovering in hospital. Heaven knows what will happen when users start trying to install it. The man's a menace."

None of this, however seemed likely to faze Ellison yesterday, as he completed his presentation with the words "are there any questions?" His reply was merely the gentle snoring of 200 slumbering journalists.