Oracle’s earnings, better than expected, were up 27% to $2 billion or 39 cents a share in its fourth fiscal quarter on revenues up 24% to $7.24 billion and good thing too considering Oracle is this week’s roundly watched harbinger of what’s happening in the economy at this very, um, nasty intersection.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison thinks Oracle’s results said more about Oracle’s execution than the macro economy.

Oracle CFO Safra Catz complained about being up against a tough compare in the current seasonally weak first quarter and predicted that Oracle would see revenues up 18%-20%, with new software licenses up 10%-20% year-over-year and earnings of 26 cents-27 cents (non-GAAP) or 17 cents-18 cents (GAAP).

Catz admitted the company was being conservative, but that 10%-20% wasn’t what Wall Street wanted to hear which is why Oracle’s stock took a hit despite its assurances of a strong pipeline. Last summer new software licenses were up 37%.

Anyway Oracle appears to have performed like clockwork in Q4 beating market estimates. Q4 is historically Oracle’s best quarter – with year-end bonus at stake it usually pulls out the stops. It produced an operating margin of 48% in the quarter, 43% for the year.

Total Q4 GAAP software revenues were up 26% to $6 billion. GAAP new software license revenues – new license growth wasn’t brilliant in Q3 particularly in the US and Oracle took a hiding for it – were up 27% to $3.14 billion with new database and middleware license revenues up 23% and new applications license revenues – the stuff that competes against SAP – up 36%.

New software licenses in the US were up 22% compared to only 15% in Q3.

GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 25% to $2.8 billion. GAAP service revenues were up 18% to $1.3 billion.

Non-GAAP earnings per share were up 27% to 47 cents or $2.4 billion. Wall Street thought it would do 44 cents on $6.86 billion.

BEA did better than expected in Q4 contributing $93 million in new license revenues on growth of ~36%, three times SAP, Oracle sniffed. Q1 will be BEA’s first full quarter as an Oracle satellite and Catz was reluctant to predict results. Then she said new BEA orders would be no more than $50 million-$60 million this quarter.

Oracle co-president Charles Phillips claimed the company is gaining market share against all-comers, with application new licenses revenues up 38% in FY08, against SAP’s 13% though SAP of course remains the leader.

Phillips said it was the “third consecutive year we’ve taken applications market share from SAP.” Ellison claims share gains against IBM and Microsoft on the database and middleware side.

Ellison scoffed at Salesforce.com for not making much money and said he didn’t want to be in a position of having a big business that wasn’t very profitable. Oracle’s 10-year-old on-demand effort is now finally profitable and the company has to see where it goes.