Robert Angel wrote:Are there any ways to 'lobby' Oracle for new functionality, other than 'raise an enhancement request' which in isolation is largely pointless....

You mention the basically most touchy subject there is. I agree that it's not the "best" solution to go for D3 or Jet, but...and here comes the big "BUT!":

a) This is the way things go at moment

b) Their idea with the plugins marketplace is slowly progressing

c) If you do anything "big data"-y you'll anyways end up writing Java of one flavour or another

On a slightly lighter note the road into Oracle's world of product sometimes can be smoothed by a combination of conferencing, beers, burgers and dancing. Oracle Product Management has a very visible and active presence at most of the conferences and User Groups and that direct contact (and access to the guys themselves) can help.

tl;dr - not all possible responses to your question are fit for this forum so if you'd like you can join us in our chat channel for a moment and we'll explain:

IRC network freenode - channel #obihackers

Over http:  http COLON //webchat DOT freenode DOT net/?channels=obihackers&uio=d4

(let's not make all bots jump in automatically...)