Another observer had a slightly different take, saying the price increases show Oracle is really trying to squeeze more revenue from the highest-end users of its database.

"Oracle is charging by CPU count," said Paul Vallée, founder and executive chairman of the , an Ottawa, Ontario, database administration outsourcing company. "It doesn't really matter in terms of their revenue whether you're pushing [the CPUs] to the max, or have plenty of resources."

Therefore, the first group is more likely to buy the add-ons, he said: "Advanced instrumentation is incredibly useful when you're really straining your system's performance. ... To me, Oracle is trying to generate more revenue from people who are trying to push the gas pedal down."

It also doesn't matter to Oracle's bottom line whether you're storing extremely sensitive data, such as banking information, or something "run of the mill," Vallée said.

To that end, the configuration management module is aimed at "auditing and compliance of high-value systems," Vallée said. "What changed when, and who did it?"