Is Oracle masculine or feminine?

Ever since the earliest days of IMS in the 1960, database system have been referred to as "he" or "him", a masculine reference within the database profession that continues with Oracle to this day.  It's not uncommon to hear Oracle phrases like:

• "He" failed to allocate enough has area

• There is a bug in "his" protocol adaptor

While it is tradition to refer to Oracle as masculine, we need to take a close look to funny understand whether this makes sense.  In Spanish, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine:

• 'House' for instance, is feminine: 'la casa.'

• 'Pencil,' however, is masculine: 'el lapiz.'

So what gender should Oracle be? In Spanish is it "El Oracle" or "La Oracle?  Let's look at two arguments:

Oracle is Feminine?

One school of thought ascribes Oracle as being with the feminine gender ('la Oracle), and a group of male Oracle DBA's explained that Oracle must be feminine because:

1. No one but their creator understands Oracle's internal logic;

2. The native language Oracle uses to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;

3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and

4. As soon as you make a commitment to Oracle, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.

Oracle is Masculine?

A group of women Oracle professionals concluded that Oracle should be Masculine ('el Oracle'), because:

1. In order to do anything with Oracle, you have to turn it on;

2. Oracle has lots of data but it still can't think for itself;

3. Oracle is supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time Oracle is the problem; and

4. As soon as you commit to Oracle, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.