Partner News

With Oracle Database 11g now generally available, dozens of Oracle PartnerNetwork members at all levels have announced products or services support for the new release.

Oracle Certified Advantage Partners

170 Systems' 170 MarkView Financial Suite is available on Oracle Database 11g. The 170 MarkView Financial Suite is used in the world's largest companies to optimize and manage financial processes. "Our customers collectively process well over US$100 billion in critical financial transactions annually with the 170 MarkView Financial Suite and need a secure and reliable database platform that can adapt and scale quickly to support their growing and changing organizations," says Karl Büttner, chairman and CTO of 170 Systems.

EMC will support Oracle Database 11g on all of its major storage platforms. Because of its participation in the Oracle Database 11g beta program, EMC is confident that its customers will successfully deploy Oracle Database 11g on EMC Symmetrix, EMC CLARiiON, and EMC Celerra networked storage systems. "EMC customers like what they see in Oracle Database 11g, and our investment in testing and qualification will enable them to deploy it seamlessly," says Chuck Hollis, vice president, Technology Alliances at EMC.

HP will offer its StorageWorks technology for Oracle Database 11g Real Application Clusters deployments. Oracle has integrated network file system (NFS) client functionality directly into Oracle Database 11g, resulting in improvements in database throughput as high as 40 percent. When used with the HP StorageWorks Enterprise File Services (EFS) Clustered Gateway, Oracle Database 11g's direct NFS provides a unified connectivity model for storage and networking and enables use of existing storage area networks. Oracle used HP StorageWorks technology to validate the direct NFS feature with decision-support system and online transaction processing workloads.

TUSC will offer database upgrade solutions using the workload capture and database replay capabilities of Oracle Database 11g. These new capabilities will help TUSC customers compare performance on different hardware or systems by capturing and replaying an actual business workload for a representative period of time. TUSC provides integration services for Oracle Applications and Oracle Fusion Middleware, as well as other services and training.

Unisys will make Oracle Database 11g available for the Unisys ES7000/one Enterprise Servers for both Linux and Microsoft Windows environments. Running Oracle Database 11g on Unisys ES7000/one servers is an element of Unisys' participation in the Oracle Modernization Alliance, an initiative within the Oracle PartnerNetwork that brings together vendors with products, processes, solutions, and architectures to move existing IT environments to modern, open systems.

Oracle Certified Partners

DataMirror has extended its real-time data integration solutions to support Oracle Database 11g. The scalability enhancements in Oracle Database 11g and DataMirror's high-performance Changed Data Capture technology together help companies react to critical business events as they occur and gather business intelligence in real time. DataMirror products enable real-time data integration across Oracle and heterogeneous environments.

GIP will use Oracle Database 11g in Xyna Service Factory, GIP's integrated platform for the development, production, and lifecycle management of IP-based telecommunication services. Specifically, Oracle Database 11g is the basis for two elements of the Xyna Service Factory platform: Xyna Service Warehouse, a subscriber-centric active warehouse, and Xyna Intelligence, a subscriber touchpoint management system. GIP serves leading German and international companies in the telecommunications, information, media, and entertainment sectors.

Tele Atlas, a global provider of digital maps and dynamic content for navigation and location-based solutions, has released Tele Atlas MultiNet for Oracle Database 11g. The full Western Europe version of MultiNet will include Oracle Database 11g geocoding and routing extensions and Oracle Database 11g-compliant 3-D city maps. "The support of 3-D features in Oracle Database 11g is important to the development of next-generation map-based applications, with textured models of buildings and landmarks that more closely match what users actually see in their surroundings," says Rob Van Essen, Tele Atlas vice president of research and development.

Oracle Partners

Application Security's DbProtect database security suite supports Oracle Database 11g. Built on an extensive knowledgebase of database-specific vulnerabilities, DbProtect combines database discovery, vulnerability scanning, real-time activity monitoring, auditing, and optional encryption. DbProtect complements the many security improvements in Oracle Database 11g, ensuring comprehensive, integrated database security.

Web Locator

170 Systems
EMC
HP
TUSC
Unisys
DataMirror
GIP
Tele Atlas
Application Security
Carrier Call
EqualLogic
GridApp Systems
IT Convergence
NAVTEQ
The Pythian Group

Carrier Call has made its voice trading solution, XCarrier, available on Oracle Database 11g. XCarrier is an integrated enterprise voice trading platform for wholesale voice carriers—a high-volume, low-margin business that requires a scalable back end with very fast response times. The new release of XCarrier benefits from the features and capabilities of Oracle Database 11g, including partitioning capabilities to deploy multiple storage tiers based on activity; advanced compression, which helps businesses maximize storage usage while maintaining availability and performance; and Oracle SecureFiles compression and deduplication, which improve the performance and security of file-based data.

EqualLogic, a provider of enterprise iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, supports Oracle Database 11g. The EqualLogic PS Series modular iSCSI storage arrays automatically balance workloads across all available system resources. EqualLogic's PS3000 Serial-Attached-SCSI (SAS) disk arrays can be used on Oracle application workloads within a multitier SAN that also includes Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) disk drives. The integration of SAS and SATA in a single SAN allows optimization of storage tiers to meet the performance and capacity needs of production and archive data.

GridApp Systems' Clarity database automation software supports Oracle Database 11g. Clarity simplifies database administration and management while enabling migration of database infrastructures to the new Oracle platform. GridApp Clarity automates error-prone operational tasks such as provisioning and patching, resulting in improved management, streamlined operations, reduced downtime, and cost savings. "Companies taking their databases to the next level with Oracle Database 11g should think about automating the management of this critical resource now," says Matthew Zito, chief scientist at GridApp Systems.

IT Convergence will offer managed services and strategic consulting solutions for customers upgrading to Oracle Database 11g. IT Convergence expects to help Oracle Database 11g customers to employ new features, such as database replay and automatic database diagnostic monitor. "We anticipate that some of the first experiences with Oracle Database 11g will be in conjunction with the Oracle E-Business Suite or similar enterprise applications," says Dan Norris, technology services practice manager at IT Convergence.

NAVTEQ, a global provider of digital map data for vehicle navigation and location-based solutions, will make NAVTEQ map data available in Oracle Spatial 11g geocoding, routing, and mapping format. As an Oracle Database 11g beta program participant, NAVTEQ collaborated with Oracle to ensure that NAVTEQ map data, NAVTEQ Transport, NAVTEQ Traffic Patterns, and NAVTEQ's real-time traffic products support the extended data schemas in Oracle Spatial 11g.

The Pythian Group is offering outsourced database administration and related services for Oracle Database 11g. Pythian DBAs will use the new change assurance features in Oracle Database 11g to validate existing client applications against Oracle Database 11g using real production data, allowing customers to upgrade to this new release with confidence.

Book Beat

Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices, 2nd edition

By Steven Feuerstein
O'Reilly Media
ISBN: 0596514107

In this compact book, Steven Feuerstein distills his many years of programming, writing, and teaching about PL/SQL into a set of best practices. Covering Oracle Database 11g, the text is organized in a problem/solution format that chronicles the programming exploits of a team of developers at a mythical company called My Flimsy Excuse, Inc.

This book offers practical answers to some of the hardest questions faced by PL/SQL developers, including the best way to write the SQL logic in application code, how to write packages so they can be leveraged by an entire team of developers, and how to make sure that all of a team's programs handle and record errors consistently.

Feuerstein writes Oracle Magazine 's PL/SQL Practices column and answers questions in his PL/SQL Best Practices column on Oracle Technology Network. He has published 10 books on PL/SQL.

Oracle Database 11g DBA Handbook

By Bob Bryla and Kevin Loney
Oracle Press
ISBN: 0071496637

This essential resource for Oracle DBAs has been completely updated to cover the new features in Oracle Database 11g. This 800-page tome details each topic with an emphasis on the big picture, enabling users to achieve effective and efficient database management. Readers will learn to develop and implement applications, manage storage space, and create reliable system backups. New and revised sections cover high availability, performance optimization, information management, and security procedures. Real-world examples and case studies illustrate each concept along the way.

Bob Bryla and Kevin Loney, authors of the previous edition, have teamed up again on the Oracle Database 11g edition. Bryla has more than 20 years of experience as a database designer, systems analyst, and DBA. Loney is a veteran Oracle consultant, developer, and DBA.

Look for Oracle books at oracle.com/technetwork/bookstore.

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