Comments on: Comments on 6334

Post number 6334

darren — Mon, 12 Mar 2001 07:19:19 -0800

I'd like to bid on an OS that crashes my computer, please. Microsoft, eBay enter alliance to support Internet services.

By: darren

darren — Mon, 12 Mar 2001 08:09:39 -0800

I'll forgo the obvious All Your Bids Are Belong to Us post, however.

By: samsara

samsara — Mon, 12 Mar 2001 08:35:17 -0800

It's like a bad bad dream darren....or like opening an e-mail with 20 fwd:'s in it referring to a recent merger with instant $$$. What I find interesting is that eBay, for the longest time has been hosting its information using SunOS with Oracle. Not that the fate of ecommerce depends on it...but judging with the problems eBay has had with Oracle and known bugs that cause corruption, would there be speculation of them moving to MSSQL? The reason being, if they wanted to adopt MS software they had better make everthing MS to avoid glitches. (MS, having their proprietary take in programming department.)

By: Markb

Markb — Mon, 12 Mar 2001 09:41:40 -0800

Also samsara, the Sun/Oracle problem was a known bug, for which eBay had received notification but then neglected to apply the patch. Not sure how moving to MS will make their DBAs any more competent. And you're soooo right about having an all MS installation.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:30:08 -0800

This isn't for internals. This is for EXTERNAL linking to and use of eBay data. It looks like they're talking about using .NET to create, to take one obvious example, an interactive interface on a partner site to an eBay auction.

By: drothgery

drothgery — Mon, 12 Mar 2001 12:13:15 -0800

Sun, Oracle, and Microsoft don't like to admit that the combination of NT/Win2K/IIS web servers and Solaris/Oracle database servers is quite common, and usually works out pretty well. So even with the problems eBay has had with its database servers, don't expect eBay to announce a move to SQL Server 2000 anytime soon.

By: Brewster

Brewster — Mon, 12 Mar 2001 22:35:30 -0800

They're talking about using XML as the middleman between the data/application side and the user-delivered content. Right now, "user-delivered content" takes the form of the web pages at ebay.com. On one level, they're saying that this content could be delivered to any interface that can use xml in a meaningful way. This could mean turning it back into an end-user application. For instance, you could have a fully-functional interface to ebay on your wireless PDA. Other uses could be for partner sites or affiliates. This is fine and dandy, but doesn't explain why they need microsoft's help in accomplishing it. I agree with samsara that there may be more microsoft on the horizon. They already run IIS. I don't agree that the Oracle bug to which they fell victim is an impetus however. Anybody knows that Microsoft is the world leader in buggy applications with swiss-cheese security models. There's an obvious reason why ebay can handle the load that it does, and that's because they use alot of server-side caching, and they run oracle on a sun. To the people upstairs at ebay, it's obviously a money game. If you were in charge, and you had the ability to make a huge personal score right now, which may cause a lot of problems in the long run, would you forego the prospect of more hookers doing lines of c*** off your c***?

By: cCranium

cCranium — Tue, 13 Mar 2001 05:10:30 -0800

This is fine and dandy, but doesn't explain why they need microsoft's help in accomplishing it. Money. MS has it, eBay wants it. If Microsoft offers to foot the bill for a bunch of eBay's stuff and uses eBay as a Proof of Concept they can point to in their advertising literature, then eBay wins because they get a bunch of hardware and software that MS is going to make sure works as well as possible, and MS wins because they get associated with eBay's success.