Ingres Corporation has hired Bill Maimone as its chief architect. A 20-year veteran of the database industry, Maimone previously worked for Oracle as part of a small team steering the development of the vendor's technology stack.

Ingres was created last year when Computer Associates spun off its Ingres database. The company currently has about 180 employees.

In a game of corporate tease, the announcement was timed to coincide with Oracle's earnings release later today.

While Ingres is not positioned to compete head-on with Oracle, the company expects to gain business from disgruntled customers and partners, Ingres' chief technology officer Dave Dargo told vnunet.com in an interview.

Partners are irritated, according to Dargo, because Oracle tends to move into their markets and take away their business. "It's very difficult for an Oracle partner today to also be an Oracle competitor," he said.

Dargo claimed that customers have a need for an open source database because recent data retention legislation requires changes to IT infrastructures.

Closed source vendors such as Oracle lack the agility to add those features, Dargo added.

• Also read: Interview: Ingres takes on the stack