If you’ve been casually following the headlines from the last few weeks as Oracle released the Oracle Fusion 11g middleware suite, you might be forgiven for thinking that the Sun-Oracle union was already paying dividends. “Java development big part of Oracle Fusion strategy” cried Computerworld. “Will Oracle’s Java-based Fusion middleware ‘fuse’ with Java?” asked IT Systems News. The system is designed to keep developers within an Oracle world, and thus provide motivation to keep sending money to Redwood Shores. Obviously Java is the big tool in the arsenal, using developers’ existing skills and inclination to keep them within Oracle’s ecosystem!Ah, but. In fact, 11g is more than anything else the fruition of Oracle’s last big merger, with BEA: the WebLogic application server is the real heart of the matter, and much of the scrambling has been to integrate last year’s acquisition with the product suite. The Sun acquisition was more forward looking: how can we make sure that this technology we’ve spent the last years building things around doesn’t fall into the wrong hands? The hard work of integration — which will include hard choices, like deciding between JDeveloper (featured in the 11g suite) and NetBeans, or figuring out what to do about OSGi — is yet to come. Technology Industry