Posts tagged Oracle
Oracle 11g Release 2 now available
Sep 3rd
Yesterday Oracle made an announcement regarding its Database Oracle 11g. The news is that Release 2 of Oracle 11g is now available. Oracle 11g Release 2 comes after a period of two years(11g was launched then). Mark Townsend, vice president database product management. Mark Townsend, vice president database product management believes that the Oracle 11g Release 2 primarily focuses and strives on consolidating hardware and virtualization. As you can expect this release brings with it many new features. The more notable ones are:
- Real Application Cluster (RAC) now has server pooling technologies – With the incorporation of server pooling technologies, it will become easier to manage and provision database grids. Townsend believes that this update is geared toward dynamically adjusting servers as corporations manage the ebb and flow between data requirements for datawarehousing and applications.
- Introduction of RAC One Node - This is a new addition that makes it easier to consolidate databases that may not be mission-critical but still require redundancy
- Improvements to Automatic storage management – With the improvements made to automatic storage management that add cluster file system tools, it would simplify the process of virtualizing storages.
- Performance improvement and optimization for Oracle’s Exadata storage appliances.
- Data Warehousing gets improved - Performance improvements for data warehousing.
Oracle to offer virtualization template tool
Aug 13th
Oracle will dig further into the server virtualization space, by offering a template-building tool to speed up deployments based on the open source Oracle VM software product.
Oracle will use the OpenSourceWorld conference in San Francisco as a launching platform for Oracle VM Template Builder,which is an open source graphical tool for end users and ISVs. The tool controls Oracle Enterprise Linux JeOS (Just enough OS) scripts for developing pre-packaged virtual machines.
Oracle senior director of Linux and open source product marketing Monica Kumar said:
These are virtual machines that contain preinstalled, preconfigured software, and basically, once you have that, anytime you have a need to put in a new system, you can copy the files,
Monica further said:
Oracle also will offer a VM template for its Siebel CRM product, allowing for fast setup of a full Siebel environment.
The company will also roll out a test kit for testing of a stack before deployment as part of the Oracle Validated Configurations Program.
Oracle VM Template Builder, the test kit, and the Siebel template are free, but users must have a license for Siebel CRM.
Oracle-Sun deal still needs DOJ approval
Jul 31st
The story started way back in April, when Oracle got acquisition to Sun Micro systems for $7.4 Billion. Latest sources tell that both companies awaits approval from the Department of Justice.
To me Oracle’s decision of acquiring the giant of hardware makers is pretty good, and it is hoped that Oracle will win the contest.
About couple of weeks ago Sun’s stakeholders had a meet-up, and confirmed the acquisition. And that leaves approval from federal regulators as the only remaining hurdle.
In June, the U.S. DOJ (Department of Justice) asked the two companies for information related to the way that rights to Sun’s Java software development language are licensed.
Dan Wall said:
narrow issue is never going to get in the way of the deal, an attorney with the firm of Latham and Watkins and counsel to Oracle, in a statement issued June 26 by the vendor. fully expect that the investigation will end soon and not delay the closing of the deal this summer
Oracle needs to close the acquisition by the 31st of coming month. Last Thursday an Oracle spokesperson refused to say on the status of the acquisition, as he referred to the June 26 statement and a statement issued on July 14 that said:
after reviewing Sun’s fourth-quarter financial results Oracle expects the acquisition to contribute more than $1.5 billion to its operating profit in the first full fiscal year after the deal closes and $2 billion in the second year.
Microsoft’e EU proposal receives a cautious welcome from competitors
Jul 26th
Once the Microsoft‘s proposal to offer a ballot screen to the European users of Windows 7 was out, many questions would have arised. One of them was, how would the competitors take it?. So this post is going to address this question. In short, a cautious welcome was seen from the competitors or the rivals if you like it that way. Thomas Vinje, who happens to be the lawyer appointed by companies that include IBM, Oracle and Red-Hat alongwith Opera welcomed the latest move by the IT giants.
Microsoft in the proposal has proposed to offer a ballot screen to the European users of Windows 7 that would enable the users to choose the browser of their choice which of course includes IE. In addition to that, Microsoft has offered to promote interoperability between third party products and Microsoft’s significant products such as Windows, Office and so on. Vinje said:
The devil will be in the details, but in principle Microsoft’s acceptance of a consumer browser ballot is a very welcome development.
Vinje defined Microsoft’s latest decision to offer a ballot screen as a capitulation in the face of near-certain defeat before the Commission. Another person who did not want his name to come to foreground said:
They don’t have the appetite to fight anymore. Now their aim is to settle up and make sure that other technology firms, like Google and IBM, are held to the same antitrust standards
One thing which I myself agree on and want to dive into it is that what are the details behind this proposal. How does Microsoft plans to carry out the implementation of the ballot screen.
Oracle buys GoldenGate software
Jul 24th
Yesterday Oracle managed to acquire GoldenGate software. GoldenGate happens to be a vendor of real-time data integration software. What the software does is that is designed with the ultimate target and vision of performing log-based transactions of data in the enterprise.
You probably would be aware of the reason behind Oracle’s popularity: Enterprise databases. Oracle’s move to purchasing a technology that offers and provides speedy access to data seems to be a smart move. GoldenGate is composed of a decoupled architecture that is capable of dealing with massive amount of information. Considering the speediness in terms of data access that GoldenGate has to offer, Oracle might be able to use it to their advantage.
GoldenGate prime usage is seen during migration and upgrades. GoldenGate is broken down into products namely GoldenGate Director and GoldenGate Veridata. During the transitional periods of migration and upgrades, enterprise databases or databases of large magnitude are most vulnerable.
The financial details are yet to be announced. But through this move, Oracle has not only acquired the richness and usefulness of real time but also has covered up a weak area of their successful and proven architecture.
MySQL 5.4 released, as Oracle deal looms large
Apr 22nd
Just after a day of setting up the deal with Oracle, Sun Microsystems has released MySQL 5.4, a new version of the popular open source database.
Sun Microsystem Karen Tegan Padir said:
Without any modifications to your applications, MySQL 5.4 will transparently increase the performance and scalability of your applications, to enable them to scale under more demanding user and data processing loads. MySQL 5.4 is also better suited for scale-up deployments on SMP systems.
MySQL 5.4 features are:
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Scalability improvements — these fixes allow the InnoDB storage engine to scale up to 16-way x86 servers and 64-way CMT servers;
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Subquery optimizations — improves the performance of analytic query operations, with some subqueries;
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New query algorithms — utilizes main memory to speed up the execution time of multi-way joins, especially for MySQL Cluster;
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Improved stored procedures — enables more robust error management through the implementation of the SIGNAL/RESIGNAL functions;
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Improved prepared statements — Output parameters will now be supported in prepared statements, which increases their functionality;
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Improved Information Schema — provides more metadata access to parameters and data return types that stored procedures use, which allows much more information to be made available for developers using connectors such as ODBC and JDBC;
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Improved DTrace support — improves diagnostics and troubleshooting capabilities for MySQL on Solaris Operating System.
MySQL 5.4 will be available for a wide variety of hardware and software platforms, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SuSE Enterprise Linux, Microsoft Windows, Sun Solaris 10 Operating System, Mac OS X.
View complete list of changes here. View feature summary here.
The preview version of MySQL 5.4 is currently available for download at Website for 64-bit versions of the Linux and Solaris 10 Operating Systems.
Sun Solaris goes to Oracle for $7.4 Billion
Apr 21st
Oracle said that they are agreed to acquire Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion.
Merger comes just days after IBM backed off acquisition talks with Sun after executives from the two companies failed to agree on a price.
Oracle executives said the acquisition would allow their company to offer a complete portfolio of products and services and help spare customers the frustration of having to build business IT systems from piece parts.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said in a statement:
The acquisition of Sun transforms the IT industry, combining best-in-class software and mission-critical computing systems.
Oracle will be the only company that can engineer an integrated system — applications to disk — where all the pieces fit and work together so customers do not have to do it themselves.
Forrester Research analyst Ray Wang thinks Oracle could keep MySQL to put pricing pressure on Microsoft, a longtime Oracle nemesis that sells a less expensive database product.
Wang, the Forrester analyst said:
“This gives Oracle the keys to the crown jewels of the open-source movement,”
Sun Solaris has retained key, widely used assets, including the Solaris operating system, the open source MySQL database — which boasts more than 11 million installations — and the Java programming language, which has become a standard for Web application development.
Ellison further said combining those offerings with Oracle’s database and back-office automation applications would help businesses cut computing costs while increasing efficiency.
Ellison said:
Our customers benefit as their system integration costs go down while system performance, reliability, and security go up,
Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said in a statement:
the deal marks “a fantastic day” for Sun and its customers, while chairman Scott McNealy called the agreement “an industry-defining event” and said Sun and Oracle have been close partners “for more than 20 years.”
Oracle has in recent years gobbled up a number of key players in the IT industry, including PeopleSoft, Siebel, I-flex, Primavera, BEA, and Hyperion.
