Prophet of Oracle’s evolving future (FT)

Sitting in a sparse Japanese pavilion beside a private lake hidden among the wooded hills of northern California, the software industry's second-richest man seems fully in command of his domain.

This is Larry Ellison's personal Xanadu. Designed, he says, to resemble a Japanese village with structures from different parts of the country's history, it has taken five years to plan and 10 to build.