Oracle and HP have a very complicated relationship, even when one puts aside the occasional lawsuits and various accusations each titan’s spokespeople release on a fairly consistent basis.

One aspect of that is represented by Oracle’s evident attempts to tap Hewlett-Packard’s partnerbase in an effort to bite off chunks of the small and mid-sized database market. Larry Ellison’s latest push can be considered a victory. His company hired Tom LaRoccaa, formerly HP’s vice president of marketing and strategy, as its VP of worldwide product strategy and alliances.

“Tom LaRocca, a 12-year Hewlett-Packard veteran who was one of the key architects of the company’s PartnerONE program, has left for a position with rival Oracle, reports CRN.

LaRocca joined Oracle this week as vice president of worldwide product strategy and alliances, according to his LinkedIn profile. Neither HP nor Oracle responded to a request for comment.”

LaRocaa is not the first HP exec that left for Oracle. Former CEO Mark Hurd, who left the manufacturer after a scandalous affair with a marketing contractor, got a job as Oracle’s new co-president shortly after he left his previous employer. The case is still drawing some buzz with the latest development – involving a newly published confidential letter – coming in this month, over a year after word first got out.

Quite a few executives have left Hewlett-Packard recently, even though not all of them joined their company’s competitor. Before LaRocca it was Michael Holston who left, HP’s legal chief. Even before that Michael Rizkalla jumped ship, the former senior director of webOS application development at HP.

Since then the company announced plans to resurrect the mobile platform in an entirely new manner, though there’s still no word if the hundreds of worked who’ve been laid off from its webOS business will be rehired.