Oracle to launch 11g database on July 11
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(InfoWorld) - Oracle has finally committed to a launch date for the next major release of its database. Appropriately enough, the vendor plans to unveil Oracle Database 11g on July 11. Oracle sent out an invitation on Wednesday about the launch event, which will take place in New York and will be hosted by company President Charles Phillips and Andy Mendelsohn, Oracle's senior vice president of database and server technologies. The vendor's primary database competitors are IBM and Microsoft. OracleÂ began laying out the groundwork for 11gÂ in October at its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, where executives talked in general terms about the upcoming release. They said the database would feature improvements in high availability, performance, scalability, manageability and what the vendor dubbed "diagnosability." In addition, the executives referred to new compression technology that could potentially reduce customers' storage demands by two-thirds and the ability for 11g to store unstructured data faster than traditional file systems. The new database is also expected to include a variety of partitioning capabilities. Oracle again talked up 11g in similar broadbrush terms at the Collaborate Oracle user group conference in Las Vegas in April. Customer issues the vendor said it hoped to address with the new database included management, security and data recovery. In beta testing since September, Oracle Database 11g is the successor to 10g releases 1 and 2. The "g" following the number refers to grid computing. Oracle shipped the first release of 10g in February 2004.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- Data integration will be one of the major themes at Oracle's OpenWorld conference this week.Â
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In an effort to step up its approach to "unbreakable" databases, Oracle today announced its Database Vault technology can now be used in conjunction with its E-Business Suite.
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After coming under criticism for sitting on patches for multiple holes in its database software, Oracle has announced that it will move to a monthly patch release schedule, though it hasn't said when.
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Oracle has launched new content management software, offering file management, security and event-driven workflows. As expected, Oracle unveiled Files 10g at this week&#39;s OpenWorld user conference in San Francisco.
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Upstart database vendor EnterpriseDB plans in March to start beta-testing a version of its Oracle-compatible software that will work within Amazon.com's Web-based computing service.
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InfoWorld - Oracle plans to fix dozens of flaws in its software products next Tuesday, including critical bugs in the company's database, e-business suite, and application server.
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Oracle  will release 46 patches on Tuesday for products including its Oracle Database 10g, Application Server and E-Business Suite.
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Recognizing the increasing importance of mobility in the enterprise, Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) has unveiled a database product that promises to extend the company's grid computing platform to workers on the move.
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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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With a focus on educating members about Oracle's 10g database and 11i.10 E-Business Suite, the Oracle Application User Group plans to holds its Connection Point 2004 annual user conference next week in Orlando.
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SEPTEMBER 06, 2004  - As part of an ongoing upgrade of its E-Business Suite 11i business applications, Oracle Corp.
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The company is shipping the open-source database for Linux and Windows to revive its usage. By Darrell Dunn. Computer Associates on Monday will take the next step in its open-source strategy with the announcement
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(InfoWorld) - Oracle Corp. has always made bold claims about the security of its database and applications. Now the company has said it will make security a priority as it begins rolling out its next-generation software products for building service-oriented architectures (SOAs), Oracle Fusion, in the next several years. Speaking at an event in New York on Wednesday, Oracle President Charles Phillips outlined three areas of security that will be important to Oracle going forward -- access control, data privacy and compliance. Acquisitions and internal product development over the last 18 months have given Oracle a comprehensive portfolio in this area, allowing the company to think of security "holistically" across its product line, he said. "We take it pretty seriously," Phillips said. "We [are putting] security where it belongs, which is consistent across the architecture." Oracle has had its ups and downs when it comes to security. The company is infamous for a 2002 marketing campaign in which it called its database "unbreakable," a notion that was proven wrong by security researchers. While Oracle's database has not been the target of a widespread attack, security experts point out that it is also in a less vulnerable position than many commonly targeted programs. Oracle databases are embedded so deeply in a network's infrastructure that attacks aimed for it are thwarted by technologies closer to the surface, such as firewalls. The true test of Oracle's security will come when it begins opening up its products to allow for SOAs, which enable applications to communicate via Web services standards across disparate systems. "Adding Web services to an architecture makes everything often more insecure because you add an additional way into the database," said Alexander Kornbrust, chief executive officer of security consulting firm Red Database Security GmbH. "Web services should be designed and developed very carefully." Beginning in March 2005, Oracle began a string of purchases to bolster its security portfolio. In March the company purchased Oblix, which has access-management software. Then last November, Oracle acquired Thor Technologies for identity provisioning and compliance software and Octet String for identity virtualization software. The company is combining these acquired technologies with new software it developed internally: Database Vault, which prevents the database administrator from accessing sensitive information stored in an Oracle database, and Audit Vault, a data warehousing product to keep track of data stored in various places. The former is available now, while Audit Vault will be available in the next few months, said Thomas Kurian, senior vice president of server technology for Oracle. Together with existing products such as Oracle Identity Federation, the products help shore up a strong portfolio for protecting data across multiple applications and systems in the network, he said. Oracle has these products now, but they will become increasingly important as SOAs become more prevalent and Oracle rolls out its Fusion architecture over the next couple of years, Kurian said. "We'll be making sure at each level of the application, you have common policies that are enforced," he said. "No matter where you come in [on a network], you can still access security." Charles Kolodgy, an IDC security analyst, called Oracle's presentation on Wednesday "a little underwhelming," but said the message the company was trying to send is important. "Many of their customers are not aware that Oracle has security offerings to help customers manage identity, data protection and compliance," Kolodgy said. "They have been know for building security into their products, but not for building security products." However, despite the rosy picture Oracle paints about its past and future security strategy, it's something customers have traditionally been less than happy with, Kornbrust said. New products like Data Vault and Oracle Transparent Data Encryption -- which encrypts database data and stores the encryption keys in another location -- show the company is taking security more seriously, he said. But Oracle has a long way to go before it gets it right. "They are not doing enough helping customers to make their database secure," Kornbrust said. "The patches are still ugly ... Selling new -- and expensive -- high-end features is good but doesn't raise the bar for the normal Oracle security. Most databases I see are vulnerable in most cases." Still, said Kornbrust -- whose firm handles Oracle security exclusively -- those responsible for securing Oracle infrastructure "appreciate the direction Oracle is taking in the last month." However, it will take at least two to four years for most database administrators and developers to see results of the changes taking place now, he said.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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News about the launch of Oracle&#39;s next-generation database is sharing headlines this week with an alert about 46 patches that will be arriving next week to fix various vulnerabilities in Oracle software.
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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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Now certified on Mac OS X Server, Oracle Database 10g is the first database designed for grid computing and it offers a cost-effective way to manage enterprise information. Pairing it with Apple&#146;s powerful server hardware and software, customers get a robust, scalable database platform that&#146;s easy and affordable to deploy and maintain. [Dec 23]