As Published In July/August 2007

CHANNELS: Partner News

Partner News

ISVs Deliver High-Value Solutions with Oracle Database XE

Independent software vendors (ISVs) are employing Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE)—the free, starter version of Oracle Database—to power their applications and deliver solutions to their customers. These vendors include

ALCiE Integrated Solutions, creating enterprise resource planning (ERP) accounting software for small and medium enterprises. The company's ALCiE Complimentary Edition (ALCiE CE) runs on Oracle Database XE, because the database provides critical functionality at no additional cost. ALCiE CE supports a single user and can be upgraded (at additional cost) to the ALCiE Small/Medium Enterprise Edition or ALCie Enterprise Edition, which use Oracle Database 10g.

• Farallon Geographics, using Oracle Database XE to integrate geospatial information into traditional IT systems. The database also enables Farallon Geographics to bridge the knowledge gap between geographic information system practitioners and IT professionals, helping businesses and government to automate business processes and increase productivity. 
• System Dynamics Corporation (SDC), using Oracle Database XE to provide ERP products and services for customers worldwide with its DYNAMIC 3i product line. Oracle Database XE gives SDC's customers powerful solutions for little or no investment: SDC's DYNAMIC 3i Free Edition supports up to four users.

ISVs can embed Oracle Database XE by packaging it with their applications, so the database is automatically installed, configured, and administered by the application. Oracle Database XE includes a browser interface for administration and applications; the Oracle Application Express application development tool; and programming interfaces for developing applications using PHP, Java, .NET, and other languages.

Eleven New ISV Solution Maps Published for Oracle Applications

Oracle has announced 11 new independent software vendor (ISV) Solution Maps demonstrating the extensive business applications available from Oracle and its ISV partners. The new ISV Solution Maps include industry maps for healthcare (provider and payer), retail, life sciences, insurance, and public sector and professional services; and horizontal maps addressing corporate performance management, customer relationship management (CRM), financial management, procurement, and project and grants management.

The Solution Maps illustrate how Oracle represents select partner products and Oracle Applications in the context of industry and horizontal business processes, and serve as a tool for ISVs to better understand and communicate with customers where and how their solutions add value to Oracle Applications.

The maps, which are linked via the Oracle PartnerNetwork Solutions Catalog, illustrate the range of Oracle Applications' functionality and indicate which components come from Oracle and which are provided by ISV partners. ISVs whose products appear in the Solution Maps must meet defined criteria, including having their integration validated through the Application Integration Architecture for Partners. Integrations can be validated through native/point-to-point, through Oracle Fusion Middleware, or through the Oracle Application Integration Architecture.

GridApp Updates Clarity Database Automation Solution

GridApp Systems has introduced Clarity 3.5, a new version of its database standardization and automation platform engine. Clarity now features enhanced patch management, an extensible configuration management database (CMDB), actionable reports, and customized workflow management.

Clarity automatically detects unpatched database servers and can reduce the time needed to apply patches. It enables patch policy creation and user-defined patch deployments to improve security across the database infrastructure. It also supports patching and patch rollback (if permitted) of non-Clarity provisioned databases. All information and activities in the CMDB can be incorporated into dynamic, customized reports, including at-a-glance summaries; archival configuration reports; and comprehensive reports for inventory, utilization, configurations, patches, init parameters, and database files. Clarity's extensible CMDB provides a centralized interface to track and manage configurations across all databases, nodes, and clusters within complex environments.

Clarity 3.5 now provides support for 64-bit Oracle on Linux and HP-UX 11.23 for Itanium and enhanced support for Oracle single instance and Oracle Real Application Clusters in Oracle9i Database and Oracle Database 10g.

Embarcadero Launches EA/Studio Business Modeling Tool

Embarcadero Technologies has released EA/Studio Business Modeler Edition, a business process and conceptual modeling tool that enables organizations to see how data architectures and database applications in an enterprise affect business processes and vice versa.

For example, a business analyst or data modeler using EA/Studio can link all the data assets that are used in order processing with a process model that shows the step-by-step fulfillment process, and then generate a list of all business processes that modify that order data. Users can import Oracle Database tables into EA/Studio to relate specific processes to Oracle data. Understanding the connections between data and business processes enables a company to understand the impact that changes to one will have on the other.

EA/Studio uses Business Process Modeling Notation and can import business models created using Microsoft Visio. Conceptual, process, and data models can be shared between EA/Studio and ER/Studio, Embarcadero's data modeling tool, for an integrated flow from business idea to SQL code generation, XML schemas, and a variety of other outputs.