Oracle To Push Clustering Everywhere

The new Oracle9i Application Server Version 2 will add support for clustered Web servers and J2EE servers, said Mark Jarvis, chief marketing officer of Oracle, at Oracle World here Monday morning.

Details were not forthcoming, but the idea behind the clustered J2EE engine is that a transaction will be maintained even if there's a failure in the Java engine, he said.

Oracle executives also rushed to reassure several thousand database administrators at the keynote that the company is on solid ground despite the weak economy and faltering license sales.

For its first fiscal quarter ended in August, database license sales were down a whopping 26 percent and revenue was down 9.4 percent. Nonetheless, Oracle remains profitable, has had no operational write-offs and no share dilution, said Oracle CFO Jeff Henley. "We have the highest margins in software outside Microsoft," he noted.

And, Oracle has continued to invest in development, hiring 20 percent more developers even over the past few lean years, he said.

On a brighter note, Henley said he expects a turnaround in IT spending to start in the next calendar year.

"We may be in an IT desert, but Oracle has the largest water bottle of anyone," Jarvis said.

Some observers maintained that Oracle has done a good job pushing the Linux versions of its products even at the risk of cannibalizing sales from higher-cost Unix systems. Oracle clearly hopes to position its database on Linux as the price-performance leader vs. Microsoft SQL Server on Wintel.

At the show, Oracle hopes to show that its Real Application Clustering (RAC) in Oracle9i database is not only technologically slick but in actual production. Some analysts have questioned how many accounts are really using RAC. One said there are probably just a half-dozen real RAC implementations. Jarvis, however, maintained that 100 or so of the company's 750 9i customers are running RAC on Linux. They include Dell Computer, Intel, Amazon.com and BT, Oracle said.