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AT ORACLE: Briefs
Oracle Acquires Real-Time Data Management Vendor
Oracle has acquired TimesTen, a provider of real-time data management software for managing events, transactions, and data for a growing number of performance-critical applications in telecom, networking, securities trading, and other industries. TimesTen software powers high-performance applications including real-time billing, stock trading, call centers, and airline operations. Customers include Amdocs, Aspect Communications, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, JP Morgan, Lucent, NEC, Nokia, Sprint, and United Airlines.
"The TimesTen technologies will be a natural extension of our database and Oracle Fusion Middleware," says Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president, Oracle Database server technologies. "This will enable us to provide our customers with instantly responsive and continuously available access to critical transaction data."
New OLAP and Data Mining Capabilities in Oracle Database 10g Release 2
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 includes significant OLAP and data mining enhancements that improve the way customers leverage huge volumes of data to better understand their business. Among the many improvements are faster performance, query optimization, multiple language support, and new data algorithms.
Oracle OLAP 10g is fully integrated into the database, and all data and metadata is stored and managed from within the database for better scalability, availability, management, and security. New features in OLAP 10g Release 2 include improved cube building and preparation performance; performance optimizations for dimensional queries; analytic workspace support for transportable tablespaces; multiple language support; and extensions to compressed cube technologies.
With Oracle Data Mining (ODM) 10g, all model-building, scoring, and metadata management operations occur entirely within the database. New features in ODM 10g Release 2 include two new data mining algorithms; enhancements to Oracle Data Miner, the graphical user interface; Oracle predictive analytics PL/SQL package, a spreadsheet add-in; Oracle SQL prediction operator, a fast SQL "apply" of ODM data mining models; and Java Data Mining.
Oracle JDeveloper 10g Free Of Charge
Oracle JDeveloper 10g, an integrated Java, Web services, and service-oriented architecture development environment, is now available free of charge. Formerly US$995, the full version of Oracle JDeveloper includes end-to-end support for modeling, developing, debugging, optimizing, and deploying Java applications and Web services.
Oracle JDeveloper focuses on Java application development and includes visual and declarative tools for developing Web services, EJB, Struts, and JSP. It also provides a full development and modeling environment for building database objects and stored procedures.
Oracle JDeveloper previously included a license for the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF), a J2EE development framework that implements design patterns and eliminates infrastructure coding. Now Oracle ADF is both bundled with Oracle Application Server and available for purchase separately for deployment on J2EE application servers from other vendors.
Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Release 2 Available
With the general availability of Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Release 2, the tasks of effective grid management and provisioning are easier, resulting in a higher quality of service at a lower cost. New features and improvements extend grid visibility and provisioning, while automating the management and reporting of IT service performance.
New features include a topology viewer with support for Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) and Oracle Application Server 10g topologies; a RAC Converter, which RAC-enables non-RAC databases; a system dashboard that enhances monitoring capabilities across the entire grid; and support for the management of heterogeneous application server platforms such as IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic.
Administrators can establish a standard set of configurations to replicate proven systems exactly as needed, and Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Release 2 extends this capability to Linux to provision systems bottom-up in a uniquely standard, automatic way.
Enterprise Grid Alliance Releases Reference Model
A new Reference Model for enterprise grids from the Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA) delivers a framework and set of customer-based requirements needed to accelerate enterprise grid adoption. The model's components include a common lexicon of grid terms, a model that classifies the management and lifecycles of the components required for enterprise grids, and a set of use cases that demonstrate the requirements for enterprise grid computing.
The model is the result of the EGA's efforts since launching in April 2004 to drive consensus among industry leaders around the basic foundations of enterprise grid computing. It provides a basis for collaboration with other organizations to ensure standards meet enterprise requirements supporting the EGA's goal, reducing duplication among various groups and eliminating barriers to adoption.
PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management 8.9 Released
Now available, PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) 8.9 helps companies achieve disciplined growth and drive toward world-class performance by aligning the right information and resources with strategic objectives. This release delivers real-time interactive profitability and planning tools, supports next-generation global compliance, and offers packaged analytic content to speed application deployment.
EPM 8.9 provides more than 200 predefined key performance indicators through standards-based Web services, giving users of other applications, such as Microsoft Office, access to the analytical content it generates. EPM 8.9 is also faster to deploy and easier to use and maintain, with usability enhancements that include easy-to-use navigation pages, personal scorecards, and individual planning workspaces.
Oracle Supports Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and ADO.NET 2.0
Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET) and Oracle Developer Tools (ODT) for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET will support Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and ADO.NET 2.0, expected for release in November 2005.
"We plan to support the new features of ADO.NET 2.0 in ODP.NET and integrate directly into Visual Studio 2005 with ODT. Everything you'd want to do with these .NET products, you should be able to do with Oracle," says Alex Keh, principal product manager at Oracle.
ODP.NET features optimized data access to the Oracle Database from .NET and allows developers to take advantage of advanced Oracle Database functionality, such as Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC), Oracle XML DB, and advanced security. In Oracle Database 10g Release 2, ODP.NET includes enhancements to expose more RAC and database security features.
Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET, a tightly integrated add-in for Visual Studio .NET, lets developers browse and modify the Oracle schema, edit PL/SQL, automatically generate code, and more. With Oracle Database 10g Release 2, ODT will also make it possible to deploy .NET stored procedures into the Oracle Database on Windows.
Demonstrate Business Value with Oracle Projects
The latest release of Oracle Projects includes enhanced project management capabilities and a new module called Project Portfolio Planning. Part of the Oracle E-Business Suite, this new release is designed to meet the enterprise project management needs of internal service-based organizations to help CIOs demonstrate business value for projects.
With this release, users can prioritize investments to optimize their portfolios; manage integrated project plans to deliver on time and on budget; reduce risk with visibility into contingent worker activities and costs; and increase financial visibility and control with more accurate and efficient budgeting and forecasting.
The Project Portfolio Planning module lets users establish common corporate objectives, accurately determine project costs, score and rank projects by multiple metrics, and create and compare multiple "what-if" scenarios.
Enhanced project management capabilities include integrated workflows between planning, execution, and control phases, as well as streamlined data entry.
"This release provides industry-specific functionality for key project-centric markets such as engineering and construction, professional and business
services, public sector, and internal IT," says Ted Kempf, senior product director at Oracle. "These project-centric businesses and departments require enterprise-level project management solutions that allow them to efficiently plan, prioritize, execute, and control their work, and Oracle Projects was built with this in mind."
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Did You Know?
Number of Major IT Security Breaches Remains Steady
Nearly 40 percent of organizations in the United States and Canada surveyed in the Computing Technology Industry Association's study on IT security and the workforce experienced a major IT security breach in the last six months of 2004. The number of serious IT security breaches was unchanged between 2002 and 2004. Human error, either alone or in combination with a technical malfunction, was blamed for four out of five IT security breaches (79.3 percent). One-half of the organizations have no plans to implement security awareness training for non-IT employees and have not considered it.
Source: CompTIA
Many Factors Drive Data
Security Decisions
When asked to identify the external event that has had the greatest impact on their information security plans, 10 percent of network and system administrators surveyed in the United States said homeland security, 18 percent said legislative drivers such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the Graham-Leach-Bliley Privacy Act, and 37 percent said customer, vendor, or partner requirements. Just over half (52 percent) said their budget was sufficient to support their information security needs. Ten percent use a single source for security solutions, while 81 percent use products from multiple sources.
Source: VanDyke Software
One in Three Firms Lack Business Continuity Plans
Almost a third of 240 global firms surveyed—28 percent—have no formal plans to protect them against terrorism, natural disasters, or systems failures, although 28 percent have experienced a full shutdown of key business operations as a result of a disaster in the past. Fewer than half of the survey participants say their organization can fully protect their business from threats to digital assets (for example, IT systems and data) and general infrastructure, and 48 percent say they can ensure their employees' safety in a disaster.
Source: AT&T and Cisco Systems
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