Oracle updates database

January 19, 2001 —

SAN FRANCISCO -- Oracle Monday released details of the next version of its flagship database, dubbed Oracle 9i, at the company's annual user conference.

When it ships sometime during the first half of 2001, Oracle 9i will include a technology Oracle calls "cache fusion." It allows an IS department to create a cluster of computers running Oracle 9i and related applications, and then add additional computers without making any changes to the data or the applications. The new cache fusion code automatically shares administrative information among all the computers in the cluster and configures the cluster to handle increased workloads and users.

The cache fusion code also insulates the cluster from a failure of one or more nodes. According to Oracle, the cluster-based application keeps running even if a computer crashes, and it can recover in 17 seconds or less.

"What cache fusion means is that Oracle 91 can handle multiple updates to multiple [database] nodes in a cluster," said Richard Winter, president of Winter Corp., a Waltham, Mass., consulting company that specializes in large-scale databases. "And that, in turn, means higher throughput, the elimination of bottlenecks and better database scaling."

Those are issues that are pressing enterprise customers and service providers moving to transaction-oriented e-commerce applications, he said.

"In e-commerce, you have much larger user populations than ever before using a single database," Winter said. "As update, or transaction, loads increase, the database has to scale to handle these. And that's been hard to do for a single database." The cache fusion technology will be "very significant" for Oracle users, Winter added.

Rivals are addressing the same issues, though in different ways. IBM uses the Sysplex Coupling Facility with the mainframe DB2 database to let multiple servers update data on a shared disk.

Winter said cache fusion needs to be delivered, proven to work, and tested to determine how scaleable it really is.

Also new from Oracle is a program called Oracle Personalization, which will be included in the 9i database. This program analyzes the current and past interactions of a user. On the basis of preferences, interests and so on, it recommends to the database what related data to serve up. According to Oracle, this work can be done without affecting database performance.

A scheduling feature lets administrators set up different recommendation schemes for different time periods or different marketing campaigns.

The intent of the personalization program is to target users, such as e-commerce customers, with information and resources specifically suited to their interests and needs.

The 9i database also has a single sign-on feature, which authenticates users just once to access applications and data across different Oracle databases and applications.

For service providers hosting applications, Oracle has added the ability to let concurrent users securely access a single large database. The service provider now can label data so only authorized users can access the data. A related feature can encrypt selected data, such as customer credit-card numbers, so that even systems administrators cannot see it.

A series of other features give the 9i database greater intelligence, so it can tune its use of memory, CPUs, and disk storage, easing the workload of database administrators.

The 9i news took OpenWorld attendees by surprise. "This is the first we heard of it. I know people who said they weren't coming to OpenWorld because they said, 'tthere's nothing new,'" said Brian Snyder, a database administrator with the distributed systems support group for The Hartford.

"[Oracle 9i] sounds fantastic from a DBA's perspective," Snyder said. He especially likes the array of new features that make the database more reliable and more available, minimizing costly downtime. One new feature, called hot standby, would have prevented a six-hour outage that recently hit a critical, Oracle-based sales force automation package on the Hartford, Conn. insurer's internal Web.

Others, noting that it might be 9 months before the new version ships, took a wait-and-test attitude. A systems administrator with the LA County Sheriff's Department, asking not to be identified, said new features such as self-tuning and others that automate database administration will be valuable, if Oracle delivers them. "If it does what they say, then it will be great. But it has to be tested," he said with a shrug.

Network World