Oracle Purchase of Sun Approved by DOJ

Database giant Oracle announced late last week that the US Department of Justice had given its approval to Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The companies now await a similar approval from European Union (EU) antitrust regulators so that they can consummate the deal.

The DOJ apparently questioned a few aspects of the acquisition, including the fate of Sun technologies such as Java and the MySQL open-source database. Some worry that Oracle will allow MySQL to languish because it competes too closely with Oracle's core product.

Oracle announced its intention to purchase ailing UNIX pioneer Sun Microsystems back in April in a transaction valued at about $7.4 billion. The deal would give Oracle a more rounded enterprise strategy, with server OS, hardware, and programming environments, allowing the company to more effectively compete with Microsoft and various high-end UNIX vendors.