DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /    ( Table of Contents )

Systems/Enterprise:

ORACLE ASSURES LOCAL CUSTOMERS OF SMOOTH MIGRATION TO 10g

Existing users of Oracle 9i database can seamlessly upgrade to the new Oracle database 10g, a new software designed to help companies achieve the highest levels of efficiency from their existing information technology (IT) investments including hardware, software and labor.

"Oracle database 10g is a significant evolution from Oracle 9i. The upgrade path is in place from Oracle 8i to 9i and migrate to Oracle 10i," said Jojo A. Anonuevo, sales director of Oracle Phil. Corp.

"The new database software can maximize the benefit of provisioning application and its ability to deploy computing capacity when you need," said Anonuevo. Some of the major users of Oracle database software include Aboitiz, PLDT and Smart Communications.

Web services, utility computing, .NET, CPU harvesting and distributed computing are just a few of the technologies that fall under the Grid computing umbrella. Gt04 -- a premiere enterprise Grid computing conference targeting industrial and commercial users -- will gather experts, and outline strategies and road maps for Grid deployment. For more information, visit www.gt04.com.

Grid computing is here!

Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Application Server 10g comprise the Oracle Grid computing, the first integrated Grid infrastructure software introduced in the market.

Oracle 10g has new features that include a self-managing capability that help automate statistics collection, instant tuning, memory tuning and more.

It helps clients automate daily and routine administrative tasks that greatly reduce management burden which translate into substantial cost savings and more effective database administration.

Anonuevo said the price of an entry level of Oracle 10g is $4,990 standard edition, cheaper than Microsoft's SQL. The Oracle 10g standard edition 1 can run up to four CPUs (central processing units) with bundled application and clustering.

"Microsoft's SQL can't do the clustering capability that would force the user to partition the database," said Anonuevo.

Traditional IT infrastructures have "islands" of computing resources and software that are difficult to integrate and manage. These systems were designed to handle peak loads that might occur once per quarter or a year. As a result, IT infrastructures become very inefficient.

Oracle Grid computing addresses this business challenge by helping customers reduce the time, labor and cost of IT operations by pooling industry standard servers and storage into an adaptable infrastructure that can meet changing business demands.

Oracle Grids support real packaged applications such as Oracle E-business suite and other software vendor applications like PeopleSoft and SAP.

Enterprise Grid computing will help customers build large-scale computing capacity from inexpensive, standardized components such as clusters of server blades and rackmounted storage.

To meet these new requirements, Oracle Database 10g has introduced advance self-management capabilities and a new Web-based console called Database Control.

Database Control provides a graphical diagnostic window into the database as it operates. It can identify poorly written application code, suggest better code and automatically tune the database to provide optimal performance.

At the heart of Oracle Grid computing is its breakthrough database clustering technology called Oracle real application clusters.

The new Oracle real application clusters 10g is a set of common clustering services built into Oracle database 10g to simplify the creation and operation of database clusters.

It includes all clustering software needed to easily install, configure and run clusters predictably and efficiently on all supported platforms.

Oracle database 10g also introduces the automatic storage management (ASM), new software designed to simplify storage configuration and management for the database.

ASM hides the complexity of how the database deals with data files and storage subsystems. It also automatically distributes storage workload to get the best possible system performance.

It eliminates the need for third-party volume management and file system software by completely automating database file and data storage.

Oracle has worked with industry storage leaders such as EMC, Hitachi, HP, Network Appliance and Xiotech to enable ASM to work seamlessly with their network attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) offerings.