BEA Tries to Prove Its Worth to Oracle - New York Times

The dance continues... 

Despite Mr. Ellison’s public statements, many analysts still think that Oracle will eventually buy BEA. With its hostile bid for PeopleSoft four years ago, Oracle declared it would not raise its price, but finally paid almost twice its initial bid.

“It’s all game theory,” said Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research. “You never want to show your cards.”

Acquiring BEA would firmly establish Oracle as the dominant player in middleware — the layer of programming code between a company’s database system and the business programs that use the same data.

BEA Tries to Prove Its Worth to Oracle - New York Times