Hopes to dazzle EC

It's been reported that Oracle will have to make its case to EU regulators on December 10, having to ease the Commission's concerns about competition in the database market before it can go ahead and absorb Sun Microsystems.

Reuters reports that its sources say Oracle has requested a hearing from the EU where the firm can argue its side of things, although competitors will also be allowed to attend the hearing and offer their two cents.

There had been some raised Eurocratic eyebrows when the $7 billion Sun-Oracle deal kicked off back in April, with worries that if Oracle took over Sun's open-source MySQL database offerings, it could reduce alternatives to its own database offerings and hurt competition - like Microsoft's SQL Server for instance.

In September, Europe's competition commissioner Neelie Kroes said the Commission had to "examine very carefully the effects on competition in Europe when the world's leading proprietary database company proposes to take over the world's leading open source database company." 

Sun develops Java software, a fairly predominant programming language used by a plethora of websites large and small.

In August Oracle was given the go-ahead from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) but Europe remains a thorn in the deal's side.

Oracle had previously asked the commission for more time to get its act together with regards to the antitrust issues highlighted, and was granted an extra week for its troubles. This gives Oracle a Januray 27 deadline before the Sun can finally set on this chapter of the deal.    

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