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Supporting High Energy Physics Research at CERN
The working partnership between Oracle and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) dates back more than 20 years. It was in 1982 that Oracle Database - then on version 2.3 - was first installed at CERN. The organization quickly realized the power of the world's first relational database management system,
and use of Oracle spread throughout the lab.
The partnership has not only provided the powerful data processing technology needed by CERN for its research, but has also contributed to improvements in the Oracle technology itself. In the 1990s, for example, CERN adopted an object-oriented approach to developing new Physics applications. Its collaboration with Oracle in this area resulted in the OCCI interface and support for IEEE floating-point numbers being incorporated
as standard features of Oracle Database.
CERN pioneers Oracle Real Application Clusters
Its constant requirement for as much data processing power as possible led CERN to become one of the first organizations to take advantage of Oracle's clustering technology as of 1996. It pioneered the use of clusters of low-cost Linux hardware servers working together as one large, powerful machine, thanks to Oracle9i Real Application Clusters (RAC). Oracle's RAC architecture ensured that the scalability, reliability, high availability and virtualization capabilities of Oracle Database could be extended seamlessly across a cluster of commodity servers, greatly reducing the cost of high-performance computing.
When Oracle developed its database clustering technology further, to enable a single database to run across a number of distributed computers, the new paradigm of Grid Computing was born. CERN was the ideal user organization for Grid Computing, and it was quickly adopted as the architecture for the worldwide computing infrastructure that CERN needed to process the huge amount of data arising from its experiments.
Oracle Grid Computing supports unique research environment
The arrival of Grid Computing ushered in a new era for the CERN-Oracle relationship began. Alongside other leading IT vendors, Oracle became part of the CERN openlab project, which focuses on creating the computing infrastructure necessary to support CERN's experiments with its new Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Oracle Grid technology services were developed for one of the world's most challenging and unique research environments, which included heavy testing of Oracle Streams to replicate data across computers running at participating research institutions around the globe.
Two Oracle-funded openlab fellows worked on Phase 1 of the openlab project at the CERN site, providing the bridge between CERN and Oracle's own R&D division in Redwood Shores, California. In the second phase, which will run to 2008, three Oracle openlab fellows will extend and deepen the relationship between the two organizations, contributing to a mutual learning process which will result in further technological enhancements for Oracle and an increasingly powerful worldwide computing infrastructure for CERN. Pushing the existing technology to the limits and exploring service-based applications in the CERN environment will be key areas
of focus over the coming months and years.
The partnership with CERN has also resulted in Oracle becoming involved in important EU funded projects, of which EGEE is the most significant. Oracle has sponsored and participated in EGEE
conferences and forums and plans to reinforce this link in the near future.
Today more than ever, the commonality of interest between the two organizations makes the CERN-Oracle partnership the perfect framework for CERN to put emerging Oracle technologies to the test against its extreme data processing needs, and for Oracle to continue to innovate as a result of pushing its technology to the limits in
the challenging CERN environment. |
