Oracle starts marketing drive on database upgrade
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Oracle Corp.  launched a marketing effort on Wednesday to promote an upgrade to its database software, its latest effort to maintain a market lead against IBM  and Microsoft Corp.
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Sybase Tuesday launched its strike in the cluster-database market, releasing Adaptive Server Enterprise Cluster Edition to compete with the likes of Oracle's Real Application Clusters.
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Open-source database to jump from beta testing to production within three months.
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Oracle Database 11g has new security, testing and management features.
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(InfoWorld) - Oracle is releasing its first version of the core Berkeley DB embedded database since acquiring the software through its FebruaryÂ purchase of open-source developer Sleepycat Software. Oracle is due to make Berkeley DB release 4.5 generally available on Wednesday. The focus is around improving performance, availability, and ease of use, according to Rex Wang, vice president of embedded systems marketing at Oracle and Sleepycat's former vice president of marketing. The new functionality was already on the road map at Sleepycat, he said. First developed in 1991, Berkeley DB is the core version of the Sleepycat embedded database, but the open-source vendor alsoÂ began offering XMLÂ (extensible markup language) andÂ Java versions of its databaseÂ in recent years. Oracle already put out a new release of Berkeley DB Java Edition, version 3.0, in May and plans a refresh of Berkeley DB XML shortly, Wang said. New in Berkeley DB release 4.5 are the ability for users to upgrade or patch a replicated Berkeley DB without having to take the entire system down, multiversion concurrency controls to handle changes being made to the database by many users, and a replication framework to help developers build highly available systems. Oracle is actively looking at how to get Berkeley DB to work with the rest of its product portfolio, but has no news on that front as yet. Unlike other areas of its business, notably applications, where Oracle is looking to consolidate disparate products into a single code base, the vendor's approach to the embedded database market is rather different. "We offer customers a range of products to meet very different needs," Wang said. As well as Berkeley DB, Oracle has its TimesTen In-Memory Database and Oracle Database Lite 10g and the company can also embed its higher end Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Application Server 10g software. Berkeley DB is complementary to Oracle's other embedded databases, but differs in having no SQL (structured query language) layer and is able to store data in memory or on disk. There's a whole host of different organizations looking to embed databases in very different environments from cell phones to networking equipment to hosted applications. The beauty of embedded databases is that they're designed to run "unattended," without any need for management by database administrators, effectively disappearing from view into other applications, he added. Oracle'sÂ prime reason for acquiring SleepycatÂ was and remains the vendor's desire to gain more presence in the embedded database arena, Wang said. Earlier this week, open-source database vendor MySQL AB confirmed that it had discontinued support for Berkeley DB as one of its storage engines. "That was due to our request to them which they readily agreed to," Wang said. He doesn't believe there was a significant amount of customer use. "It was an interface that neither party was maintaining," Wang added. "For years, no work was done on the interface." Â
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Oracle database users discuss plans to upgrade to the new 11g database, saying its new features outweigh its shortcomings.
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You don't bring me flowers anymore International florist FTD is calling on fellow Oracle users to switch database vendors. It dumped the company in favor of EnterpriseDB in its latest project, after meeting with "indifference" from the enterprise giant.â¦
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Sybase has just announced a partnership with IBM to market the former&#39;s database on the latter&#39;s hardware. If that doesn&#39;t make you sit up and take notice then nothing will.
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Oracle on Wednesday will introduce Oracle Application Server 10g Release 2, which is being characterized as a significant upgrade to the product with improvements in Java, Web services, and identity management and the addition of RFID backing.
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The business software maker hopes to prod rival Oracle into raising its current bid by $1.5 billion.
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On tap for the new database management system: improvements in high availability, performance, scalability, manageability and what Oracle dubs "diagnosability."
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Private no more, the open-source database will find new customers.
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(InfoWorld) - New software licensing revenue growth -- the highest inÂ 10 years for the company -- helped boost Oracle's first-quarter financials. New software licensing revenue grew 35 percent to $1.1 billion, the strongest growth of any quarter in the past decade, the company reported on Thursday. Revenue for the period ending Aug. 31 was up 26 percent to$4.5 billion and net income grew by 25 percent to $840 million compared to the same quarter last year, based on generally accepted accounting principles. Earnings per share grew 28 percent to $0.16. Applications' new license revenues helped drive growth, increasing by 65 percent over the corresponding period last year. Database and middleware new license revenue was up 23 percent, the highest growth rate in seven years for Oracle, the company reported. Oracle released a major upgrade to its database software during the quarter, helping to drive that increase. The company had 35,000 downloads of the software during the first month it was available. Oracle's results significantly beat some analyst expectations, including those of Citi Investment Research. Citi expected 20 percent growth in overall new software licensing, 15 percent growth in database and middleware license revenue, and just 33 percent in applications. While database software is the historical focus for Oracle, the company is now hoping to become a dominant player in its two other lines of business: applications and middleware. Oracle figures it is number three in the middleware market, behind Microsoft and IBM. If Oracle and IBM continue to grow at their current rates, Oracle could pass IBM at the end of this year or early next year, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, said during a conference call to discuss the earnings. In applications, Oracle is behind market leader SAP. The companies have different strategies for growth with Oracle trying to sell to its existing large company customers and SAP chasing small businesses, he said. "While we think the small business market is interesting because it's large; we just haven't figured out a way to make a substantial profit in that market," he said. Oracle would have to build a new sales force, products, marketing, and advertising efforts in order to address the market, which doesn't promise strong revenue, he said. Oracle's applications business, with its continued focus on existing customers, has the potential for huge growth in the future, he said. "We're just at the very beginning in terms of penetrating this market," Ellison said. The business includes products that Oracle sells to companies like telecommunications operators. Those companies typically use custom software, some of which they may have installed as long as ten years ago, said Charles Phillips, president of Oracle. So part of Oracle's challenge is to convince these companies that off-the-shelf software from Oracle can work, he said. For the current quarter, Oracle expects new software license revenue to grow 15 percent to 25 percent from a year earlier and total revenue to grow 19 percent to 21 percent. Earnings per share this quarter should be $0.20 to $0.21, up from $0.18 for the corresponding period last year, Oracle said. This story was updated on September 20, 2007
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In a move to retain and attract new customers, PeopleSoft has announced a new promotion that includes a free technical upgrade to all users, and a free first quarter of application management services following go-live from PeopleSoft Global Services.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Oracle at the OpenWorld conference here on Tuesday is making several product rollouts, including a new version of its database and grid computing enhancements.
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Revamped website signals desire for broader customer base
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Oracle has starting shipping a suite of tools for linking Web 2.0 apps with data sources and business processes.