Oracle at the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco has
made several product roll outs, including a new version of its
database and grid computing enhancements.
Being unveiled is Oracle Database 10g Release 2, which sports
enhanced availability, manageability, performance, and security
features, the company said.
Scheduled to ship in mid-2005, the database offers new sorting
techniques to improve operations such as queries and index
creation. The function also may eliminate the need for pre-loading
of sort operations.
Additionally, improved load balancing in the Real Application
Clusters function of Oracle’s database platform enables quicker
response to changing server utilisation patterns.
An API is included in Release 2 for Oracle’s Cluster Ready
Services, to enable higher application availability. Also, new
automated failover capabilities will improve a website’s ability to
come back online after a disaster.
The new database also features more automated storage management
operations and easier sharing of storage resources in a grid
environment.
Administrative enhancements include collection of performance
statistics directly from memory, to allow diagnosis of slow or hung
environments, and Automatic Workload Repository comparison reports
for troubleshooting. There also is greater awareness of overall
system performance in the database’s Automatic Database Diagnostic
Monitor.
Security is being improved through transparent encrypting of
critical business data.
Application development features include support for the W3C XML
Query standard for access to XML data; improved Windows support via
stored procedures implemented in the Common Language Runtime and
enhanced integration with Visual Studio. Also featured is augmented
development functionality for Oracle HTML DB, which is a rapid web
development tool for the Oracle Database.
Oracle also has announced Enterprise Manager 10g Release 2, for
administering applications and systems.
New grid control capabilities, called Oracle Grid Control, offer
automated software management features to allow administrators to
deploy systems quicker, Oracle said. New service-level management
functionality enables viewing of business services and
service-level performance via a single screen.
Support for heterogeneous systems is boosted, including backing
for alternative application servers and Linux. A Topology
Visualization function in the release provides a visual
representation of IT systems and services.
Enterprise Manager 10g Release 2 is slated for availability in
mid-2005.
Oracle has also unveiled Oracle Business Integration, which
features an ESB, business process management, enhanced application
integration, and BAM (business activity monitoring).
The product support business process management based on
service-oriented architectures and BPEL, and offers connectivity
with mainframes, databases, messaging systems, transaction
processing monitors, and applications from Oracle, SAP, Siebel
Systems and Microsoft.
Paul Krill writes for Infoworld