In fact, Oracle's long run of acquisitions, spanning from applications to middleware to hardware, has resulted in so many partner and customer constituencies that it's now co-locating a number of additional shows, including MySQL Connect and JavaOne, along with the main OpenWorld program.

Here's a look at what's scheduled for the week, as well as what sort of surprises Oracle may have in store.

: Despite its forays into business applications and hardware, at its core Oracle remains a database company, and it will announce version 12c, with the c standing for "cloud," during OpenWorld.

CEO Larry Ellison already publicly and also described some of the release's new features, which include support for multitenancy and "pluggable" databases.

But the deep-dive into 12c probably won't come until Monday, when co-president Mark Hurd and database chief Andy Mendelsohn deliver a joint keynote.