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“We are getting close to this level of personalisation,” he says, citing work being done in Oracle’s labs.

On another front, applied to credit card and telephone records, a similar meeting of personal data and technology will help the authorities do a “better job in finding terrorists,” he says. (Another terror attack in the vein of 9/11 is the one thing that “keeps him awake at night”). More than that, the development of these types of predictive modelling techniques, already used to track markets on Wall Street, “will help make societies more efficient”.

But doesn’t Larryland sound scarily like a dystopian state? What about the father with a family history of cancer who finds himself being refused a mortgage?

“There is no doubt that information can be misused. But it’s true of all technologies since fire,” Mr Ellison asserts – though he sounds less sure when he considers the possibility of all his e-mails being stored and made searchable.

“Keep all e-mails? God help us … It’s complicated … but it would be good for Oracle,” he finally decides.

The mixed view is typical: in person Mr Ellison is a captivating mix of hyper-competitiveness and a targeted generosity of spirit.

This is, after all, a man who swears by Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War – a book whose other fans include Wall Street's Gordon Gekko.

But this would-be samurai (Mr Ellison's Californian estate mimics a feudal Japanese fortress) is lavish with his praise. He wouldn’t even consider comparing himself with Jack Welch, the former head of GE, on whose company he has modelled his own since the start of his acquisition spree, he says. John Chambers, the boss of Cisco, Silicon Valley’s biggest company, is “inspiring”; Mark Hurd, the Hewlett Packard chief executive is “one hell of a tennis player”.

But asked which chief executive he admires most he leaps in with “Steve Jobs, no question. He’s the CEO of the decade”.

The pair’s friendship (both, incidentally, are orphans) is legendary – despite the Oracle chief describing how Mr Jobs talked him out of buying Apple just before he rejoined the company in 1997, unveiled the iPod and shot the shareprice into the stratosphere.

With thoughts turning to succession, Mr Ellison, the last founder-CEO of a tech giant, is equally enthusiastic about his lieutenants. Charles Phillips, the company's president, and Safra Catz, the chief financial officer “could both do my job,” he says. Other top executives say there has been a definite change in recent years, with Mr Ellison prepared to delegate more responsibility. The adopted GE system of splitting Oracle into autonomous units means it could not be otherwise, he adds.

But always, even on board the tranquil Rising Sun, Mr Ellison manages to exude a brooding sense of competitive angst.

He describes his love of sailing in terms of always being able to measure how quickly you are catching up the boat in front, or drawing ahead of a vanquished competitor (he doesn’t give credence to the though of falling further behind). Despite nominally taking three months “off” to race in Spain, he is in daily contact with Oracle HQ. Every Monday there is a meeting with his inner circle of senior executive that lasts for several hours.

Meanwhile, in a 90-minute interview, unprovoked, he brings up SAP, Oracle’s biggest rival in business software, no less than eight times, rubbishing the German group’s strategy and even the bullish predictions Henning Kagermann, its chief executive, has made on the market.

“He says the investment environment is where we were at the beginning of the 1990s. I hope he’s right, but I don’t understand the basis,” Mr Ellison says.

However, he reserves his most damning assessment for Microsoft.

Without Office, the software package that includes Word and Exel, the group Bill Gates started just two years before Mr Ellison founded Oracle is “nothing but a videogames company,” he says – a definite glint in his eye.

Wall Street analysts would concede he has a point. Office is a product attached firmly to the PC in an age where the action is online. But you get the feeling this goading of the opposition is all part of the grand competition. Microsoft, the world’s largest software company, after all, is the boat in front - the one Mr Ellison has to beat.

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