Oracle9i Database Update To Post This Week

Oracle

Release 2 will sport enhancements to Oracle's Real Application Clustering (RAC), more integrated OLAP and better XML support, most of which the company has demonstrated, the company said.

Versions for Solaris, Windows 2000, HP-UX, Linux and AIX are slated to be available late this week or early next week on the Oracle Technical Network (OTN), said George Demarest, Oracle senior director of marketing for databases.

"Release 2 will bring full XML database capability to the Oracle server--this is the full Oracle server that can store and manage and search XML documents using both SQL constructs as well as SQLX and Xpath," he noted.

Oracle rivals IBM and Microsoft are also preparing better XML support for their databases. IBM said it now plans to ship the next release of DB2 to beta this summer and to have general availability in the fall. Many DB2 users had expected the follow-on release of the current DB2 Release 7.2 to be available in June. An IBM spokeswoman maintained that there has been no product slip, however.

One of the biggest RAC improvements is that Oracle is filling the gaps between most operating systems and the database so clusters can be applied across nodes fairly easily, the company said.

"We've created a cluster file system ... available first for Windows and then for Linux, so that Oracle data files can sit on the file system which is shared throughout the cluster," Demarest said.

Big Oracle partners are especially bullish on that aspect. "I like that there is no need for raw devices for clustering. This is a giant benefit," said Richard Niemiec, CEO of TUSC, an Oracle integrator and partner in Lombard, Ill.

Oracle, which has been the traditional leader in distributed databases, now finds itself under fire from Microsoft and IBM. New Gartner Dataquest numbers show Oracle's dominance fading, at least when it came to new license sales last year.

Perhaps for that reason, Oracle has upped the ante in its Windows and Linux efforts. Where database releases on those operating systems had lagged Solaris in the past, they will not this time around, at least not by much, Demarest said.

"Last year we got criticized that Windows came out later than Solaris, so this time around all will be shipping within 24 hours of Solaris and HP-UX," he said. "We've polished up our internal processes and raised the priority of Windows and Linux internally. They're all primary platforms."

He said to expect general availability of Release 2 in June.