Cut to the chase, Oracle's choices for strategic products going forward are not exactly a shock. WebLogic Server, until a few years ago the leader in the space, is going to be Oracle's Java middle tier going forward. It wasn't until Oracle 11g that, in Larry Ellison's words, it finally got the appserver right. So it's obviously going with the more established offering. Tools are another story: Oracle claims to be the second largest contributor to Eclipse, yet it continues to spurn the IDE on which the Eclipse Foundation was founded. Instead, Oracle focused its efforts on EclipseLink, the implementation of JPA that it donated to Eclipse.

While Oracle has been schizoid in its Eclipse strategy, BEA was schizoid on tools in general. Originally embracing a VB-like approach with the original WebLogic Workshop, BEA later forsook the technology following acquisition of an Eclipse-based successor, throwing its installed base into a confusing migration strategy. No question here as to which way Oracle is going.

In other areas, Oracle's roadmap is a case of seasoning its Fusion portfolio with BEA pieces where they fill gaps. That includes AquaLogic Service Bus, which now gets fortified with Oracle's service composition fabric that comprises its implementation of the proposed SCA standard. Ditto for SOA governance, where AquaLogic Repository fills a gap, and where both relied on OEM bundles with Systinet for the UDDI service registry. And the same goes for entitlements, a BEA technology that will be added to Oracle's Access Management suite. As for BPM, BEA's AquaLogic offering -- the former Fuego product -- provides the middle ground for business unit level implementation that complements the top-down of its existing bundled offering from IDS Scheer. While BEA/Fuego customers liked the degree of control that their tool provided, under Oracle they are going to have to give up the run time to Oracle's BPEL Process manager. Call that a case of realpolitik.