Does the future for HP's Unix sound like the 3000's past? No, it couldn't be the same. More than 140,000 customers use HP-UX and Oracle. The trouble is the second part of that recipe, now falling like a cake dropped out of an oven.

In our Weekend Podcast (11 minutes, 11 MB) we hear the sounds of the competition between Oracle and HP, which is getting hot as the summer hovers. So are the complaints from HP's Unix customers who need Oracle. Some of these luckless sites got shooed off MPE and the 3000, only to find that their new ecosystem on HP's Unix will be barren of Oracle before long. At least HP's got one stalwart database vendor to count on in the HP-UX environment --  a partner making a product that behaves like the 3000's IMAGE.