This week's Oracle OpenWorld will likely go down in history as one of most interesting to date, to say the least. Not only are innovations being presented and new technologies debuted, but the industry is seeing a competitive spirit among both Oracle and hardware providers who serve the Oracle enterprise.

As an AP story outlines today Oracle is focused on bonding with Sun, its soon-to-be-acquired hardware partner, and the oracle of Oracle himself, Larry Ellison, is throwing down a few gauntlets.

But when the noise quiets down about benchmark results, and the smoke clears about what supposedly works better with what, there are more than a few hard truths that will never change.

One is that Oracle users will only benefit in such a competitive industry climate as it's been proven time and time again that good technology makers only rise and achieve when competition heats up.

Second, no matter what technology we're talking about, no one solution is the end-all or the get-all for every business and its respective needs.

When it comes to database environments and business goals it's not just about software and hardware. It's not just about speed and performance.

It's about understanding how to make that database system do the most with the most efficiency, how to expand that database capability without growing operations costs at the same time, and how to discover undiscovered value in data and all the processes that come into play.

Yes, having the right parts or the best parts to make a system slick and lean is important. But as every DBA, and anyone who relies on databases for business operations knows, that's just one piece of the very big pie called Oracle.