Putting Oracle Database 11g to Work

Business benefits are at the core of Oracle’s latest database release

Your IT staff may get excited about the nuts and bolts of a new software release, but the ultimate success of an upgrade is based on the benefit it delivers to the business. Profit Online took a closer look at Oracle’s new database—Oracle Database 11g—to get an executive’s take on the value of the release. Here are five important new features that will benefit your enterprise:

• Protect and manage unstructured data
  Unstructured data—the volumes of information stored outside of the database—is the fastest growing type of enterprise data. From medical imaging records to XML data types to geospatial objects, organizations are storing and managing more large data files—without the added protection, security and management capabilities associated with traditional database solutions.
  
  Oracle Database 11g’s SecureFiles allows you to deliver this information from the database with the same speed and performance of a file system. But SecureFiles allows you to compress (for reduced storage requirements), encrypt, (for greater security) and de-duplicate (for greater information accuracy) this data. By moving unstructured data into database you can better track and secure important data that is currently spread around your enterprise.
  
  “We think this is the last remaining piece to really help nudge our customers to move more and more of their high-value business documents out of file systems into databases, and get all the benefits of a database, you know, the reliability, availability, security,” says Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president of Database Server Technologies. “It makes it easier for them to deal with their auditors who are always auditing them against compliance requirements.”
  

• Simplify compliance
  For added compliance support, Oracle Database 11g’s Total Recall feature allows you to essentially “rewind” a database—to take it back in time before a change was made, an error occurred, or a transaction was completed.
  
  “Total Recall is helpful for auditing and compliance situations where an organization needs to find out what a hacker (or a DBA) was doing at a certain time,” says Mendelsohn. “Using Total Recall you can very easily go back in time—six months or a year or whatever period you need—and track down exactly what changes were made to the database, and when they were made.”
  

• Reduce the Risk of Change
  In business, managing change effectively is a critical component of staying competitive. But change isn’t easy—particularly when you’re talking about software upgrades. “Every organization needs to change because they need to keep up with their competitors,” says Mendelsohn. “Businesses need to respond to change. But every IT shop knows that change also brings instability.  And so they’re very reluctant to change.”
  
  Oracle Database 11g reduces the risk of technology change, allowing you to give users to get the best software without unnecessary complications. Oracle Database 11g’s Real Application Testing tests software upgrades against new versions of a database or operating system, making it easier to identify and fix problems before they go live. Oracle Database 11g’s Database Replay captures actual database production workloads and replays them on a test system to identify the full impact of system changes. In addition, 11g makes it easier to apply one-off database patches with no downtime.
  

• Greater visibility and business insight
  Access to good information gives business managers the insight they need to make critical business decisions. Enhanced data warehousing and business intelligence in Oracle Database 11g makes data mining and analytics easily accessible to mainstream users. Improved support for online analytical processing (OLAP) improves query performance and alerts users when important changes are made to data. Now, end users are closer to critical information and the business decisions it influences.
  

• Reduce downtime and meet user expectations
  Oracle Database 11g makes it easier than ever to reduce downtime and meet user expectations for system performance and functionality. Oracle Active Data Guard allows organizations to run real-time queries on a physical standby system for reporting and other purposes—resulting in faster business results and a greater optimization of resources. In addition, 11g’s Automatic Storage Management (ASM) automatically mirrors and balances data across available storage devices, increasing data protection and optimizing performance while required fewer IT resources.