Oracle's next database release will focus on continued improvements
in manageability, increased capacity and spreading clustering
technology to new platforms.
However, the next release of the database is not expected until the
middle of next year according to Andrew Mendelsohn, senior
vice-president of database and applications server technologies at
Oracle.
The next release will focus on database management, where Oracle
will continue the simplification and automation of management seen
in Oracle9i.
"Over the next couple releases, we expect to cut the [database]
management costs in half again," said Mendelsohn.
An attendee at the conference applauded Oracle's management
improvements made so far. "I like the trend that they have toward
being able to modify system parameters without taking down the
database," he said. "I expect that they'll continue that trend in
10i."
Grid computing, pertaining to clustering and virtualisation of the
datacentre, is highlighted.
The clusterware function of the Oracle Real Application Clusters
technology, which detects when nodes are failing, is, at present,
only supported on Windows and Linux. However, it will be extended
to Unix systems from Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM,
Mendelsohn said.
Extending clusterware will help minimise software integration costs
and costs in general, said Mendelsohn.
Oracle will improve its XML DB support, which enables the database
to act as an XML database. This feature will gain improved
performance and enhanced capabilities.
Also at OracleWorld, Oracle officials showed a portal feature
called OmniPortlet for aggregating information from different
sources of data.