|
http://www.arnnet.com.au/index.php/id;118637089;fp;16;fpid;1
Oracle promises space savings in latest database
Oracle Database lets users patch without taking systems
offline and offers improved compression technology
Jon Brodkin (Network
World) 12 July, 2007 07:40:11
Oracle released a
major upgrade of its database management system for grid computing Wednesday,
promising customers hundreds of new features including the ability to patch
without taking systems offline, simplified application testing, and several
green upgrades, such as compression of data, to make it three times smaller.
Oracle Database 11g is
the successor to 10g, the first version of which was shipped in February 2004.
After 10 months of beta testing, Oracle described the product in detail for the
first time, saying it stems from the work of 1,500 developers and 15 million
hours of testing.
Oracle president
Charles Phillips emphasized 11g's ability to save space and power at a launch
event in
"Every customer
is looking at this space issue, the fact that they're buying so many disks. The
cost of data centers alone is a big concern." Phillips said. "We
built in advanced compression. We compress the data on the fly for you
automatically, so you get a 3X savings on disk space."
Another space-saving
feature takes standby databases -- normally kept in reserve in case the main
system crashes -- and offloads certain tasks to them. The standby database is
simultaneously available for reporting, backup, testing and rolling upgrades of
production databases.
Oracle also added what
it calls "real application testing" to help
customers quickly test and manage changes to their IT environment, such as
database and operating system software upgrades.
These features save
space by eliminating the need for a dedicated test server and backup recovery
server, Phillips said. "Everybody wants a greener data center," he
said.
Oracle, which has been
criticized for not quickly providing patches, said it added a "rolling
patching" system to its latest database to update the grid automatically
with no downtime.
"This is a
breakthrough we think is huge," Phillips said. "You don't want to
take systems down."
More than one-third of
Oracle database customers who attended the Independent Oracle Users Group annual conference plan to
upgrade to 11g within one year, and more than half will upgrade within a few
years, the group says.
IOUG president Ari
Kaplan spoke at Oracle's launch event and praised the company for helping
customers with regulatory compliance.
11g introduces Total
Recall, a query tool allowing administrators to look at data from any time in
the past, which Oracle says will be useful for tracking data changes, auditing
and compliance.
The price of 11g is
unclear. When asked, an Oracle spokeswoman said "we'll have more to share
regarding pricing in the near term."
Oracle launched 11g at
an event featuring James Burke, science historian, author, producer and host of
the BBC series, "Connections." Burke said 11g will "free up the
massive potential of the brainpower in companies," adding that "in
this new age of innovation speed is the key, not only to innovate but to do it
faster."
Oracle partners
followed up with their own announcements, including EMC, which said it will
support Database 11g, and the vendor Application Security, which said its
database security suite will also support 11g.
Back to
Ari Kaplan's Home Page