We know Wall Street is fickle but this time the numbers add up just fine. Oracle reported Q3 results which disappointed investors because sales of new Oracle application licenses grew just 7% compared to 63% in Q2. While total software revenue grew 21%, Wall Street focused on new applications. It is important to recognize that this is the sweet spot of potential geospatial revenue as well. While we tend to think of only Oracle Spatial/Locator as a feature set, the growth in geospatially-enabled applications, specifically Oracle applications in vertical markets, is where the growth will be. If we see this part of the business slowing, then its likely the adoption of spatially-enable applications will be affected. Caution: this is just a forecast only because in speaking with Oracle at the Oracle Spatial Users Group meeting, interest in vertical applications for spatial are humming along.

Oracle's Q2 profits blew away analysts estimates by posting a 36% per share gain and sales of new licenses for database and middleware sofware were up 28%. Oracle's president, Charles Phillips put SAP squarely in their sights by saying, “We like our growth strategy of expanding beyond ERP into high-end industry specific vertical software in contrast to SAP’s strategy of moving down market to sell ERP systems to small companies." It was followed up by a statement by CEO Larry Ellison who then shifted the target to IBM, "We continue to take market share from IBM in both product categories," referring to database and middleware solutions.

Oracle Magazine [updated to no reg URL per comments - Adena] published an article that included a case study of the the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (COE) and how it is utilizing Oracle 11g Spatial. The corp is using Spatial to store permiting data as x-y pairs and exposing the data through a Web Feature Service (WFS).

I'm just glad Oracle Magazine has an article on spatial. Kudos.