As Published In November/December 2011

AT ORACLE: Briefs

Briefs

Oracle Exadata Runs Oracle Solaris

Oracle Solaris 11 Express is now available on Oracle’s Exadata Database Machine X2-2 and Exadata Database Machine X2-8. Organizations can take advantage of the reliability, scalability, and security of Oracle Solaris to run their online transaction processing, data warehousing, and consolidated workloads on x86-based Oracle Exadata machines.

This combination offers organizations continuous uptime with the Oracle Solaris Predictive Self Healing feature to diagnose, isolate, and recover from hardware and applications faults as well as the ability to analyze, tune, and troubleshoot applications with little or no performance impact using the Oracle Solaris DTrace feature.

“Over the past year, we’ve worked very closely with the Oracle Database and Oracle Exadata teams to enhance Oracle Solaris to deliver unmatched performance and availability for Oracle customers’ database workloads,” says Markus Flierl, vice president of Oracle Solaris core engineering. “Coupled with intensive system and patch testing, we offer an Oracle Solaris on Oracle Exadata Database Machine that’s highly robust and ready to deploy out of the box.”

Oracle User Productivity Kit Gets a Refresh

The latest releases of Oracle User Productivity Kit and Oracle User Productivity Kit Professional are now available to speed the deployment, adoption, and ROI of business applications. Oracle User Productivity Kit 11 and Oracle User Productivity Kit Professional 11 are easy-to-use and comprehensive content development, deployment, and maintenance platforms for increasing productivity and adoption for Oracle, third-party, and custom applications projects.

With Oracle User Productivity Kit and Oracle User Productivity Kit Professional, teams can create, access, and share content tailored for all phases of the project lifecycle, dramatically reducing deployment and adoption time to drive IT project success. The new releases of both products enable organizations to condense project timelines, optimize business processes, and promote user acceptance of enterprise applications.

“Enterprises are always looking for ways to reduce project timelines and increase acceptance of their enterprise applications to maximize ROI,” says Trish Trolley, senior director of Oracle User Productivity Kit product management. “New features in Oracle User Productivity Kit Professional 11.0 target the challenges traditionally associated with user adoption, helping customers achieve IT project success.”

Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1 Revealed

Oracle has unveiled Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1, the latest release of its open source, cross-platform virtualization software that enables desktop and laptop computers to run multiple guest operating systems simultaneously. This release features a new virtual machine cloning facility, enhanced large-system support, improved remote access, and expanded platform and application support. Oracle VM VirtualBox supports a variety of host operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, and other popular flavors of Linux.

“By significantly enhancing the world’s most popular cross-platform virtualization software for the second time within a year, Oracle is clearly demonstrating its commitment to both the desktop virtualization market and the open source community,” says Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president of Linux and virtualization at Oracle. “With the enhancements that have been introduced in Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1, customers can benefit from significant usability and flexibility improvements.”

Oracle Modifies User Engagement Platform

Oracle has restructured Oracle WebCenter, its complete, open, and integrated portfolio of portal, Web experience management, and content and social computing technology. Oracle WebCenter’s four components include Oracle WebCenter Sites, Oracle WebCenter Portal, Oracle WebCenter Content, and Oracle WebCenter Connect.

Oracle WebCenter Sites is a set of tools that allow business users to quickly create, deploy, target, and measure multichannel online marketing. These tools allow business users to deliver relevant, optimized, and content-rich contextual Web experiences and extend brand engagement and Web presence to mobile and social channels.

Oracle WebCenter Portal is a set of portal and composite applications that deliver intuitive, personalized, and contextual user experiences for enterprise applications. A prebuilt library of components can be used to enhance existing enterprise applications and to create new composite applications.

Oracle WebCenter Content is a unified content management capability that ensures seamless access to the right information in the appropriate business context. This component helps organizations implement a strategic content infrastructure for managing documents, images, and rich media files while delivering contextual integration with enterprise applications.

Oracle WebCenter Connect is a set of social tools that accelerates business processes by allowing users to collaborate on activities and connect with internal experts to address business challenges.

“Organizations are seeking ways to boost customer loyalty and improve business performance by maximizing engagement with internal and external constituents,” says Andy MacMillan, vice president of product management at Oracle. “The latest evolution of Oracle WebCenter represents the convergence point for all products under Oracle’s Enterprise 2.0 portfolio, making it easier for customers to achieve that goal.”

Oracle Updates In-Memory Data Grid

Oracle has unveiled Oracle Coherence 3.7.1, the latest release of its in-memory data grid. Oracle Coherence provides users with greater flexibility in data grid client languages, reduced latency, and increased throughput of network communication when deployed on Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and significant performance improvements for seamlessly managing data across memory and disk-based solutions.

Oracle Coherence features a new REST API that allows users to leverage popular client languages, such as PHP and Python, to access, manipulate, and report on data stored in the Oracle Coherence data grid. REST support complements the existing Java, .NET, and C++ support in Oracle Coherence, giving users flexibility in their application design, environment, and development choices.

Oracle Coherence leverages Oracle’s Exabus high-speed communication feature in Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud to increase scalability and lower the latency of data grid operations. Combined with Exabus technology, Oracle Coherence provides the next generation of massively scalable, low-latency data and state management for middleware applications.

Enhancements to the Oracle Coherence Elastic Data feature provide more-efficient memory and disk-based storage and improve data access performance, giving users greater flexibility, expanded capacity, and more efficiency in their existing infrastructure.

Also new is the ability to analyze the efficiency of queries against data in Oracle Coherence by generating an explain plan to explain the calculated effectiveness of each element of an Oracle Coherence query.

“Oracle Coherence 3.7.1 continues to reduce complexity, ease integration, and accelerate time to market of scalable solutions through new features, such as Query Explain Plan and REST support,” says Cameron Purdy, vice president of development at Oracle. “At the same time, when running on an Oracle Exalogic engineered system, Oracle Coherence 3.7.1 leverages Oracle’s Exabus technology to achieve the lowest latencies and highest throughput.”

Oracle Buys InQuira

Oracle has acquired InQuira, a provider of knowledge management software that supports Web self-service and agent-assisted service. InQuira’s solutions help customers find more-relevant answers to questions online or from a service agent guided by a scalable knowledge management platform.

“The acquisition of InQuira provides Oracle with a complete knowledge management suite, integrated with self-service support, online customer forums, and agent-assisted CRM [customer relationship management],” says Anthony Lye, senior vice president of Oracle CRM.

Java SE 7 Released

Java Platform, Standard Edition 7 (Java SE 7), the first release of the Java platform under Oracle’s stewardship, is now available. The release is the result of industrywide development involving open review, weekly builds, and extensive collaboration between Oracle engineers and members of the worldwide Java ecosystem via the OpenJDK Community and the Java Community Process.

Key enhancements in Java SE 7 include language changes to help increase developer productivity and simplify common programming tasks by reducing the amount of code needed, clarifying syntax, and making code easier to read; improved support for dynamic languages (including Ruby, Python, and JavaScript), resulting in substantial performance increases in the Java virtual machine; and a new multicore-ready API that enables developers to more easily decompose problems into tasks that can then be executed in parallel across arbitrary numbers of processor cores.

“We’re very excited about Java SE 7; this is a great release with strong technology updates. I’m pleased that the Java community has come together in favor of technical progress and that we have a clear path forward for Java SE 8,” says Hasan Rizvi, senior vice president of Oracle Fusion Middleware and Java products.

MySQL Installer Does Windows

Now available, MySQL Installer for Windows simplifies, streamlines, and speeds the installation process for MySQL users running on Microsoft Windows platforms. The installer features an intuitive graphical interface that guides users through the installation process. It also offers the capability of installing all MySQL products that are required at once and provides an integrated update system for all MySQL products installed.

Oracle has also completed certification of MySQL Enterprise Edition for Windows Server 2008 R2 Failover Clustering, enabling Windows users to deploy business-critical applications that demand high availability.

“Oracle continues to invest in MySQL to address the evolving needs of Windows users,” says Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL engineering at Oracle. “With MySQL’s new installer for Windows and failover clustering certification, enterprise users and independent software vendors can improve management, reduce cost, and power business-critical applications with MySQL Enterprise Edition.”

Oracle Unified Directory 11g Unveiled

Oracle has released Oracle Unified Directory 11g, a unified directory solution that organizations can use to manage the critical identity information that drives their business applications. Oracle Unified Directory features highly integrated storage, synchronization, and proxy capabilities. These capabilities meet the evolving needs of enterprise architectures that must support an increasing number of mobile computing and cloud computing requirements.

The solution enables organizations to lower the cost of administration and ownership by maintaining a single directory for all of their enterprise needs, while also simplifying their enterprise architecture. It is optimized for mobile and cloud computing environments because it can scale by dynamically adding more directory instances.

“Oracle Unified Directory significantly changes the directory market landscape by providing a unified solution in a fragmented marketplace that addresses enterprise, internet, and cloud requirements,” says Amit Jasuja, vice president of Oracle Identity Management. “By implementing a single integrated offering, customers no longer have to compromise between speed and features.”

Oracle Application Testing Suite 9.3 Released

The latest release of Oracle’s advanced application testing solution for Web, SOA, and Oracle Applications, Oracle Application Testing Suite 9.3, is available. It features a test starter kit for Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management (Siebel CRM) that provides prebuilt scripts for functional and load testing for easier and more-efficient testing of Siebel CRM implementations.

Oracle Application Testing Suite 9.3 also provides deeper integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager’s middleware and database diagnostics features. This improves testing efficiency and productivity by enabling testers to detect performance bottlenecks faster and with less effort.

The suite supports structured, business-driven testing based on Capgemini Group’s Test Management Approach, a risk-based approach for structured software testing that helps organizations more effectively manage and standardize test processes.

“Real-time application performance is an increasing requirement for customers across many industries, as performance interruptions and delays can lead to lost business, productivity, and often revenue,” says Richard Sarwal, senior vice president of product development at Oracle. “Oracle continues to deliver new innovations in Oracle Application Testing Suite that enable testers and QA managers to easily perform and track real-world testing and diagnostics on their applications to help ensure optimal performance.”

Product Resources   Demos MySQL Enterprise Edition This three-minute demo shows you how MySQL Enterprise Edition reduces the risk, cost, and time required to develop, deploy, and manage business-critical MySQL applications.   Tutorials Setting Up a Multiuser Development Environment (MUDE) Using the Oracle BI 11g Administration Tool This tutorial illustrates how to create and test a multiuser development environment using the Oracle Business Intelligence 11g administration tool. Specifically, it covers how to set up the development environment to support two users. Oracle Application Express Release 4.1 Series This eight-part series provides instructions on how to use Oracle Application Express 4.1. Topics include manipulating database objects, using interactive report regions, creating a data load wizard, and more. Implement a Simple Network Design for Oracle VM for x86 This series of five tutorials outlines the steps to implement a simple network infrastructure for your Oracle VM x86 environment. These steps can then be reused to modify the initial network design or to grow your network infrastructure.   Downloads New Downloads Oracle Database, Express Edition 11g Release 2 Oracle Application Express 4.1 Top Downloads Java Platform, Standard Edition 7 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Oracle Database, Express Edition 11g Oracle Enterprise Manager 11g Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g

Oracle Buys Ksplice

Oracle has acquired Ksplice, the creator of zero downtime update technology for Linux. The addition of Ksplice’s technology will increase the security, reliability, and availability of Oracle Linux by enabling customers to apply security updates, diagnostic patches, and critical bug fixes without rebooting.

“More than 7,000 customers have chosen Oracle Linux for mission-critical systems because of our world-class support offerings,” says Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president of Oracle Linux and virtualization. “The addition of Ksplice’s zero downtime update technology further extends our Linux technology leadership.”

Oracle Business Intelligence Gets a Boost

Oracle has introduced new releases of Oracle Business Intelligence Applications and Oracle Real-Time Decisions. New product capabilities span out-of-the-box iPad and iPhone support, extended online analytical processing and in-memory platform support, enhanced real-time decision management features, and new certifications.

Oracle Business Intelligence Applications 7.9.6.3 provides alerts, dashboards, and reports via iPad and iPhone and features a new user interface with interactive charting and prompting capabilities, including map visualization options directly linked to spatial data.

Oracle Real-Time Decisions 3.1 introduces Decision Manager, an application to manage, monitor, refine, and optimize operational decisions across customer interaction channels. Decision Manager offers a collaborative user interface for business stakeholders to author their targeting logic; search and manage their catalogs; and analyze the results of their operational decisions.

“According to IDC research, worldwide demand for business analytics software continues to grow, and Oracle is positioned to help organizations benefit from the analysis of the vast amounts of data they generate,” says Dan Vesset, vice president of business analytics solutions at International Data Corporation (IDC).

Oracle Enterprise Data Quality Unveiled

Oracle has released Oracle Enterprise Data Quality, which combines the recently acquired Datanomic data quality products and Oracle Product Data Quality to provide data quality capabilities for any data domain, including purpose-built capabilities for customer and product data.

Oracle Enterprise Data Quality is integrated with Oracle’s core master data management solutions, including Oracle Customer Data Hub and Oracle Product Hub, to provide timely, accurate, and consistent high-quality data sharing across disparate heterogeneous systems. The product addresses independent data quality requirements and is also a critical component of Oracle’s data integration solutions, including Oracle Data Integrator. Oracle Enterprise Data Quality is also integrated and certified with Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management.

The product is designed to enable prebuilt data quality-based applications such as watchlist compliance screening that can be delivered both by Oracle and by Oracle’s partner community.

“Oracle Enterprise Data Quality sets a new bar with class-leading, purpose-built capabilities for the major data types of customer, supplier, and product data,” says Hasan Rizvi, senior vice president of Oracle Fusion Middleware product development.

In a related development, Oracle introduced Oracle Watchlist Screening, an application that leverages Oracle Enterprise Data Quality to provide a best-of-breed solution to the highly topical challenges that companies, such as financial institutions, face in managing their Know Your Customer and Enhanced Due Diligence obligations, which are due diligence requirements for banks and financial organizations.

Oracle Previews MySQL 5.6

An early access release MySQL 5.6 is now available for the MySQL community to test, deploy, and provide feedback. The features in this release will be included in future development milestone and general availability releases.

These new features in the early access release focus on better scalability, performance, and flexibility. They include enhancements to the InnoDB storage engine and improvements in MySQL replication.

InnoDB updates provide support for full text search, greater performance for write-intensive applications, and better scalability under high-concurrency/user loads.

New and improved MySQL replication features help with performance, scale-out, and data integration.

“Oracle continues to advance MySQL to address the evolving needs of application developers,” says Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL engineering at Oracle.