Database, app server, Java tool improved At its Oracle OpenWorld conference, Oracle last week announced upgrades to a host of products, including its database, application server and JDeveloper development tool.The company unveiled 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. 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 follow-up 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],” Mendelsohn said. Pooling servers under a management console, specifically Oracle’s Grid Control technology, presents a lower-cost method of IT operations that can deliver mainframe-quality service, Mendelsohn said. Despite Oracle’s grid mantra, conference attendee Jim Walker, database administrator at MCI, questioned how the concept could work across different operating systems in the same network. “The only thing that I think could be useful is grid computing in the clustered RAC [Real Application Clusters] sense,” he said. Grid might be of use in providing redundant data for development and reporting functions, Walker said.Oracle also rolled out Oracle Application Server 10g Release 2. The product features enhancements in business integration, BI, identity management, portal, mobile RFID, and J2EE components. Support is included for WSIF (Web Services Invocation Framework), WS-Reliability, WS-Policy, and JavaServer Faces.Oracle unveiled the JDeveloper 10g Release 2 development tool, with 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. The company revealed it is working on a database development tool called Project Columbus, set for release by June 2005. The technology is intended for management of database objects and to enable developers to code in a variety of styles, said Chuck Rozwat, Oracle executive vice president of server Technologies. Technology Industry