Oracle today handed investors an unimpressive first quarter report card, showing flat net income and only modest gains in database sales.

The software maker reported net income of $519m for the period, which matches up with a profit of $509m reported last year. More impressive gains were found by looking at first quarter revenue which surged 25 per cent to $2.77bn. The results arrived as Oracle closed out a customer conference being held this week in San Francisco.

"This week at Oracle OpenWorld, 35,000 customers and partners embraced our innovative next-generation Fusion Middleware with hot-pluggable components," said Oracle's president Charles Phillips. "Hot-pluggable interoperability with IBM middleware puts us in a strong and unique position in the middleware business."

But talk of hot-pluggable interoperability can only carry a company so far.

Oracle had a harder time explaining why database license revenue increased only 1 per cent year-over-year to $492m and why new software license revenue growth hit just 12 per cent. The company pointed to soft sales in Europe and a couple of delayed, large deals for the results. Investors showed their displeasure, knocking 4 per cent off Oracle's share price in the after-hours markets, at the time of this report.

Oracle is looking for second quarter revenue to come in between 22 per cent and 26 per cent higher or a range of $3.37bn to $3.46bn. ®