Update: OpenWorld Notebook – database, grid control, integration improved

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.

Traditional management tools are not up to the task of managing grids because they just try to mask complexity and are limited, according to Rossiter. Grid management involves using standardized systems that enable provision of a simpler management mechanism, he said.

Enterprise Manager 10g Release 2 is available in mid-2005.

Oracle, Intel, Dell, and EMC at the conference provided details of an enterprise grid effort called Project MegaGrid. The initial phase of the project is focused on designing, testing, and documenting best practices for building enterprise grid infrastructures accounting for cost and performance requirements.

Oracle is providing its Oracle 10g application server, database, management, and clustering technology to the effort. Dell is providing a networked server infrastructure while EMC is furnishing storage. Intel is contributing processor and server management.

“What they’re doing is they’re talking about proving that they can have an extensible enterprise grid to complement what Dell has already done in the HPC [high-performance computing space],” said analyst Jean Bozman, research vice president at IDC. The vendors want to prove they can put together a grid for enterprise computing deployments similar to how grids have been deployed for technical applications, Bozman said.

An OpenWorld attendee, however, was not enamored with grid, questioning how it could work in mixed environments of, for example, Linux and Sun Microsystems environments. “How would you set p clusters across different OSes,” said Jim Walker, database administrator at MCI.

“The only thing that I think could be useful is grid computing in the clustered RAC sense,” he said. Grid might be of use in providing redundant data for development and reporting functions, Walker said. 

Oracle at the show also is announcing Oracle Business Integration, which features an ESB, business process management, enhanced application integration, and BAM (business activity monitoring). The product supports business process management based on SOAs (service-oriented architectures) and BPEL.(Business Process Execution Langauge). It offers connectivity with mainframes, databases, messaging systems, transaction processing monitors, and applications from Oracle, SAP, Siebel Systems, and Microsoft.

The company also formally rolled out Oracle Application Server 10g Release 2, which had been the subject of a conference session on Monday. The product features enhancements in business integration, business intelligence, identity management, portal, mobile RFID, and J2EE components.

Support is included for WSIF (Web Services Invocation Framework), WS-Reliability, WS-Policy, and JavaServer Faces.  Also featured for enterprise integration is enhanced business automation and monitoring via Oracle BPEL Process Manager 10g. The BPEL product is an add-on offering to the application server costing $10,000 per CPU.

High availability is enhanced in the application sever via functions such as automatic fault recovery and multi-tier failure notification. The application server is priced at $30,000 per CPU.

Oracle also rolled out the JDeveloper 10g Release 2 development tool, featuring enhanced Java editing, compiling, and deployment plus XML features such as an XML editor, XML schema editor, and XSLT mapping tools. Other features include advanced code navigation, hierarchy browsing, and code templating. Web services support also is featured.

Also at the conference on Tuesday:

–  Oracle’s Mendelsohn noted he did not know how far PeopleSoft has gotten in certifying its applications to run on the Oracle 10g database platform. “You can make your own jokes about what’s going on,” Mendelsohn said, in an obvious reference to Oracle’s ongoing attempt at a hostile takeover of PeopleSoft.

– Despite having just 8 percent of its customers upgrade to the 10g database since its release in February, Oracle is satisfied with the upgrade rate, noting it tracks upgrade rates of previous databases. The 8 percent figure accounts for 16,000 customers, Mendelsohn said. “That’s more than most companies have for their entire installed base,” he said. Oracle anticipates the “masses” will move to Release 2 of the 10g database.

– Release 2 is expected to be the last upgrade under the 10g nameplate, Mendelsohn said. Oracle’s future database plans involve making the database a better data store for all types of information, Mendelsohn said.