Meta Group analyst Mark Shainman says Oracle users should take legal action to block the database giant from renegotiating some license fees.

Meta says customers who aggregate feeds to and from data warehouses on Oracle databases are now being asked to pay more. The issue arises, according to Meta, because batch jobs to the database are now being considered by Oracle as several, rather than one request. Oracle supports multiplexing, or pooling data through a proxy, from several sources into one request. Oracle now wants to regard this as many requests, rather than one request.

Shainman says this could result in a fivefold increase for some users. He says users should go to court to defend existing license arrangements.

Oracle says it's being entirely consistent, and characterizes the Meta bulletin as a "misunderstanding".

Readers with first hand experience of the new multiplexing license arrangement should get in touch. We'd like to hear from you. ®