Oracle at the OpenWorld conference on Tuesday is making several product rollouts, 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.
Noting 10g was a major release, Oracle’s Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president for Database Server Technologies at Oracle,
called Release 2 more of a maintenance release intended as a stable followup for mass adoption. Mendelsohn again touted Oracle’s
grid technologies, which are pertinent in the database.
“The notion [of grid] is to move away from dedicated computing resources that are dedicated to specific computing [systems],”
he said. Pooling servers under a management console, specifically Oracle’s Grid Control technology, presents a lower-cost
way of IT operations that can deliver mainframe-quality service, Mendelsohn said.
Improved load balancing in the Real Application Clusters function of Oracle’s database enables quicker response to changing
server utilization patterns, the company said. Also, an API is included in Release 2 for Oracle’s Cluster Ready Services,
to enable higher application availability. New automated failover capabilities will improve a Web site’s ability to come back
online after a disaster, according to Oracle.
The new database also features more automated storage management operations and easier sharing of storage resources in a grid
environment, according to Oracle.
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. Automated backup capabilities have been
expanded to include backup to tape, as opposed to just disk, Mendelsohn said.
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 on Tuesday also is announcing Enterprise Manager 10g Release 2, for administering applications and systems. New grid
control capabilities, dubbed Oracle Grid Control, offer automated software management features to allow administrators to
deploy systems more quickly, 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 application servers from IBM and BEA Systems and the Linux
platform. A Topology Visualization function in the release provides a visual representation of IT systems and services.
“The mission of grid management is really quite simple but difficult to achieve. It’s to gain the highest quality of service
for a wide variety of applications” and deliver business services while lowering labor costs, said Jay Rossiter, Oracle vice
president of system management products.
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