In Brief Already engorged, Oracle has stuffed yet another software maker into its belly, gobbling up Sleepycat.

Sleepycat produces the open source Berkeley DB database that gets embedded within applications. Its software has proved popular with relatively fixed function applications such as switches, routers and email servers. Oracle will slot Berkeley DB into its own embedded database line.

Sleepycat claims more than 200m deployments in the world and has high-profile customers such as Google, eBay, Cisco, Yahoo! and AT&T. So, Oracle will inherit a strong developer presence and some choice accounts with its buy.

Away from the massive purchases of PeopleSoft and Siebel, Oracle also grabbed open source database maker Innobase last October. Rumours have Oracle eyeing open source types JBoss and Zend as well.

Oracle did not disclose the financial terms of its acquisition. ®