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Latest news on database software and vendors

21,000 Oracle jobs vanish amid Big Red's big bets on AI

Annual report reveals workforce fell from 162,000 to 141,000 in a year as company pours billions into datacenter expansion

A woman in a sweater sits at a CRT monitor desktop PC in an office

Microsoft Access finally breaks free of its 22-inch form limit

CRT-era restriction dragged into the widescreen age after 34 years

The database that refused to die: How Postgres survived its own creators

From academic toss-aside to cloud substrate

A robotic hand interacts with a code display, illustrating AI-assisted software development.

The new database world according to Google: Inexact queries and AI in everything

'Humans are not going to be using data platforms in the next three to five years,' product exec tells us

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SQL Server may be too lucrative for Microsoft to ditch, but too legacy to love

Analysts say Redmond still has billions of reasons to keep backing its flagship DBMS, even as Azure, Postgres, and AI hog the spotlight

NHS patients can't opt out of Palantir's data platform – but their hospital can

Minister says trusts can go it alone on procurement as Parliament mulls February 2027 FDP contract renewal

Oracle's AI datacenter splurge gives investors the capex jitters

Q4 sales climbed 21%, but Wall Street more interested in $70B buildout bill

EU flag in binary code illustrating digital sovereignty.

Neo4j plots Palantir alternative with GraphAware acquisition

Graph database biz says on-prem, air-gapped intel stack gives governments a no-kill-switch option

Microsoft allows BYOL for Amazon RDS. Repeat, Microsoft allows BYOL for Amazon RDS

SQL Server licenses can now be consumed in the rival cloud's DBaaS

Palantir wins £9M contract to run UK firearms licensing: CIA-backed biz to hold gun, bomb, and poison records

Pips Accenture and NEC to bag decade-long deal for cops across England, Wales, and beyond

Agent-led devs need serverless OpenSearch, Amazon claims

System relies on a proprietary storage layer as AWS moves to separate storage and compute to fit mega AI demands

A seal lying on a white ice floe beside bright turquoise water.

AWS whips out Graviton-powered Redshift instances, claims 7x speed for data warehouse

AI agents asking questions in natural language apparently issue a lot more queries than your average SQL jockey

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MySQL faithful launch OurSQL Foundation to keep Oracle honest

Community group wants transparency, collaboration, and a clearer roadmap for the open source database

An orange-and-white life ring floats on blue water with a rope trailing beside it.

PostgreSQL backup tool gets some backup of its own after sole maintainer sounds alarm

AWS, Percona, Supabase, pgEdge, and Tiger Data rally round pgBackRest with funding pledge

London's police asked Big Tech for comms data over 700,000 times last year

A Freedom of Information Act request shows the extent of the surveillance

Google tells database devs to lean hard on AI for PostgreSQL work

Cloud giant says humans remain accountable, even when code gets an assist from the machines

A gloved hand places a pink rose on a stone memorial.

dBase debased: Database titan fades to black after 47 years

Blog post mourning decline appears to have helped knock what was left of the veteran app's online presence offline

Medical staff use a laptop to record treatment data at a hospital desk.

NHS England confirms: Palantir staff can access patient data

Tech firm's employees can get an 'admin' role letting them into the National Data Integration Tenant... and its identifiable information

SAP dives deeper into Iceberg with Dremio acquisition

ERP giant previously leaned on Databricks for integration

AI clause in new SAP API policy has partners worried over lock-in

Expert says it could push customers and partners to work with undocumented APIs

Database world trying to build natural language query systems again – this time with LLMs

Text-to-SQL might be useful for analysts and DBAs, but be cautious with general user adoption

The spaghettified DBMS chart that shows Oracle's crown is slowly slipping

Change is glacial, but the direction is clear

Illustration of a data lake with numbers superimposed over a lake

DuckDB uses RDBMS to attack classic 'small changes' problem in lakehouses

Batching teensy changes in chunks creates massive performance boost, DuckDB Labs team claims

WARNING: Oracle's AI obsession could mean higher prices and worse support

Advisers say fewer staff could mean slower answers and tougher renewals

Sellafield Nuclear Reprocessing Plant in Cumbria

Britain's biggest nuclear site skips competition, hands SAP £33M to start ERP switch

Sellafield says sticking with German giant is only way off legacy ECC before support runs dry

Metropolitan police image via Shutterstock

DXC lands Metropolitan Police outsourcing deal that could climb to £1B

Supplier will support the current Oracle E-Business Suite and lead migration to a new Oracle Fusion SaaS platform

EDB Postgres AI for WarehousePG: Reclaiming control of the enterprise data warehouse

Proprietary warehouses delivered scale — but at the cost of control, predictable pricing, and real flexibility. Enterprises are doing the math.

La Gorda http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-892819p1.html

SAP looking to pull more external data into its AI platform with Reltio acquisition

Merger positioned to boost appeal of ERP giant's Business Data Cloud

Microsoft Fabric Database Hub only a 'partial' solution for admins

Could help break silos, but users should take wait-and-see approach to system limited to Microsoft DBs and DBaaS

SAP already shifting focus from ERP migration disaster in pursuit of AI-driven growth

New commercial models planned after cloud transition falls €2B behind target

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Palantir trial plugs into UK financial watchdog's data trove

US analytics firm handed access to sensitive intel, raising yet more questions about vendor lock-in

SAP's grand cloud escape plan €2B short of the runway

Strategy launched after 2020 share price crash is 24% behind target

Microsoft promises all-in-one database wrangling hub on Fabric

PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server all handled via Database Hub, vendor says

West Sussex's Oracle rollout pushed back again as costs balloon 15 times

Already five years late, project delayed another six months after price tag swells from £2.6M to £41M

Campaigners claim NHS Palantir system could be accessed by police and immigration

US spy-tech biz and platform provider retorts that this would be against the current law and a breach of its contract

Oracle moves to assure MySQL community it really does care

Big Red waves new features including vector support, while skeptics await concrete timescales

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MariaDB backs down on Galera removal after community outcry

But questions remain over long-term commitment to clustering tech in open source

UK government's Shared Services Strategy is entering the danger zone

Gargantuan ERP and HR overhaul has committed around £1.7B and affects nearly half a million public workers

Team Oracle 8 ailerons custom built plane flies in front of the Chicago skyline

UK Treasury not sure about ditching Oracle to join £1.7 billion shared services program it is funding

It promised £1.15B… but finance ministry yet to show 'formal commitment' to adopt Workday SaaS, watchdog says

editorial only image of Whitehall. Pic Daniel Gale/Shutterstock

Capita's £370M Whitehall outsourcing deal challenged as 'abnormally low'

Rival bidder Sopra Steria launched legal claim over DWP procurement

SAP writes $480M check to finally end IP legal spat with Teradata

A joint venture from 2008 led to years of claims and counter-claims between the data whizzkids

King Penguins flock. Pic credit: Giedriius / Shutterstock

Open source devs consider making hogs pay for every download

Careless big-time users are treating FOSS repos like content delivery networks

Mondelēz picks Celonis as process backbone for SAP overhaul

Snack giant opts for vendor-neutral process mining as it shifts from ECC to S/4HANA

Quebec vehicles agency spent C$245M over budget on SAP ERP it wasn't sure it needed

Probe says SAAQ misled government and botched rollout caused province-wide disruption

letters stuffed in a mailbox. Photo by SHutterstock

Dear Oracle, we need to talk about the future of MySQL

Faithful pen open letter proposing independent foundation with or without Big Red's participation

Oracle vows 'new era' for MySQL as users sharpen their forks

Commit drought and governance gripes push Big Red to reset

UK council digs deeper into capital assets to keep Oracle project afloat

West Sussex plans to triple use of property sales as ERP budget blows past original estimates

Most SAP migrations bust budgets and project timelines, research finds

As 2027 ECC support cliff looms, half choose not to re-engineer processes in critical ERP upgrade

Digital composite of snowflakes and frost

Snowflake plugs PostgreSQL into its AI Data Cloud

Yes, it already had Unistore

Oracle's first general on-prem release of its .ai database iteration draws skeptics

Users happy with 19c as experts question AI lock-in

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SAP refuses to budge on renewal discounts despite cloud growth slowdown

Drop in customers' cloud conversion rate causes share price to plunge 22% – steepest decline since 2020

Meunierd http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-364990p1.html

Oracle seeks to build bridges with MySQL developers

Big Red promises 'new era' as long-frustrated contributors weigh whether to believe it

In-house techies fixed faults before outsourced help even noticed they'd happened

60-minute SLA was effectively useless and the contractor admitted it

Birmingham City Council's Oracle ERP fiasco now £144M and still not working

Five years after its planned go-live, the system remains incomplete as costs balloon more than sevenfold

RAF Chinook throws up dust cloud. Pic: MoD under Open Government Licence

Microsoft shifting to cloud management software brings possibility of it peeking into your estate

Deprecation of popular management tool requires a new look at Azure-based system

Larry Ellison waves goodbye. Pic: Dr Serg/ Shutterstock

As Oracle loses interest in MySQL, devs mull future options

As Big Red's governance of the popular database comes into question, contributors to MySQL consider wresting control

SAP scores £275M award from UK tax collector – sans competition

System handling £800B must be SaaS and sovereign. Only German vendor fits the bill, says HMRC

ERP isn't dead yet – but most execs are planning the wake

7 out of 10 C-suite cats reckon software category's best days are behind it, but can't agree what's next

Picture of a person's fist hitting an emergency red button

Birmingham pauses Oracle relaunch to get staff on board

Europe's largest council delays Fusion reimplementation four years after go-live disaster

Bank of England's Oracle cloud migration bill triples as project grinds on

Initial £7M estimate proves optimistic after multiple contract uplifts

No membrane in sight as Osmos diffuses into Microsoft Fabric

AI data engineering startup acquisition brings ETL and Spark automation in-house

Airbus exec: Most CIOs in Europe will not finish SAP ECC6 migration by 2030

Aerospace giant faces 'massive work' to move legacy ERP systems to S/4HANA as support deadline looms

Oracle raises AI spending estimate, spooks investors

But if you assume cloud IOUs will be fulfilled, business is booming

SAP users in the dark about vendor's plan for data analytics

February product launch fails to register, with concerns remaining about integration

IBM straps AI to Db2 console in bid to modernize the old warhorse

Intelligence Center features aim to unify management across on-prem, cloud, and containerized estates

UK SAP users say they're baffled by Business Suite reboot licensing maze

Pricing complexity makes justifying migrations an uphill battle

MongoDB talks up its AI chops by talking down PostgreSQL

CEO touts win from 'super-high growth' customer that couldn't scale on rival system

Dorset Council ditching customized SAP for £14M Oracle overhaul

Authority follows Birmingham and West Sussex, which both suffered disastrous transitions

Employee trust in SAP board dips amid ongoing restructure

German mega vendor responds to latest in-house survey

Manchester hits snooze again on joining Palantir-run NHS data platform

Care board still waiting for evidence that it will be in the best interests of the population