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The European Commission still hasn't decided whether it should clear enterprise software company Oracle Corp.'s (ORCL) $7.4 billion deal to buy Sun Microsystems Inc. (JAVA) or launch a full fledged four-months antitrust probe, a person familiar with the situation said Wednesday.

The commission, which is the highest antitrust authority in Europe, must decide what to do with the deal by the end of Thursday.

The main obstacle to the deal gaining regulatory approval relates to concerns about Oracle obtaining computer networking technology developer Sun's MySQL database, the person said.

The commission in August asked for feedback from software competitors and the companies' clients about whether the deal might cause competition problems related to Sun's Java computer programming language; software which glues separate programs together, known as "middleware"; and databases.

Industry experts thought if the regulator was going to have any problems with the deal it would concentrate on the Java programming language, as it is the main product driving the deal.

Even if the commission chooses to launch a probe, it isn't likely to block the takeover. The commission has been reluctant to prevent mergers since a spate of decisions in 2000 were overturned in the European courts, hurting its reputation.

However, it often asks companies for concessions. These can include divestments where there is a strong overlap, or asking companies to restrict business in certain areas.

The deal has already been cleared by the U.S. Justice Department.

European Commission competition spokesman Jonathan Todd declined to comment on the progress, saying the deadline was set for Thursday.

-By Peppi Kiviniemi, Dow Jones Newswires; +3227411483; peppi.kiviniemi@dowjones.com