System News for Sun Users

Now Available: Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database 11g Release 2

2012-01-16T17:00:00+01:00

Oracle's application-tier in-memory database Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database 11g Release 2 is now available. The release incorporates significant performance and scalability improvements for real-time online transaction processing (OLTP) applications and introduces new functionality to support analytic applications with real-time in-memory data management. The solution now ships with Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management, enabling that solution to achieve significantly faster response time, higher throughput and can support more subscribers than prior releases. Furthermore, Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database for Exalytics will also be available for Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine as an application-tier in-memory database cache.

Gartner Names Oracle ATG in Leaders Quadrant for E-Commerce

2012-01-09T17:00:00+01:00

Oracle ATG Web Commerce Suite, a comprehensive and scalable commerce software platform, aids enterprises in the delivery of a personalized customer buying experience across multiple customer touchpoints, including the web, contact center, mobile devices, social media, and physical stores. Gartner has named the solution to its Leaders Quadrant in the 2011 Magic Quadrant for E-commerce. Technology providers in the Leaders Quadrant are recognized for demonstrating an optimal blend of insight, innovation, execution in their corporate vision.

New Release of Oracle Tuxedo 11g

2011-12-19T17:00:00+01:00

The features and the optimized integration with Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud available in the new release of Oracle Tuxedo 11g application server for C/C++, COBOL, and dynamic languages, enable users to gain increased application performance, accelerated and simplified migration and modernization of mainframe applications. Oracle Tuxedo 11g also includes Oracle Tuxedo Application Runtime for IMS 11g, a new product within the Oracle Tuxedo family that helps customers substantially reduce IT costs, increase business agility and reduce risk by accelerating and simplifying the migration of IBM mainframe IMS applications to open systems.

TimesTen and In-Memory Database Cache

2011-12-14T17:00:00+01:00

Blogger Sam Drake takes a look at how one might simultaneously exploit the fast memory-centric performance of TimesTen, and the large capacity and familiarity of the Oracle Database. He suggests using IMDB Database Cache (TimesTen) on the application server configured to cache tables from the Oracle Database. Thus, changes made by the application in TimesTen are automatically reflected in the Oracle Database. When a user logs off, data stored in TimesTen is erased, freeing RAM space for the next user, Drake writes, leaving the bulk of the database workload of your site handled in RAM, by the TimesTen database.

Partitioning and Oracle Licenses

2011-12-07T17:00:00+01:00

Oracle VM for SPARC is now explicitly named as a hard partitioning technology. A guide from oracle.com provides information on "Server/Hardware Partitioning" that discusses the attributes of server partitioning and comments on how companies can leverage partitioning to optimize their software licenses. Also discussed are the two principle tyes of partitioning: soft partitioning using OS resource managers to partition the OS into segments; and hard partitioning, which involves physically segmenting a large server into distinct, smaller systems The implications of licensing agreements as to partition type are considered.

Oracle Named to Leaders Quadrant in Gartner's 2011 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers

2011-11-10T17:00:00+01:00

Oracle has been named in the Leaders Quadrant of Gartner's 2011 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers for both its vision within a particular market segment and for the completeness of vision and ability to execute on that vision. In Oracle's case, its Cloud Application Foundation and Oracle WebLogic Server figure prominently as the reason behind the nomination. Oracle describes its Oracle WebLogic Server as " ... optimized to run as a high performance, mission critical, elastic cloud infrastructure on Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, the world�s first and only engineered system for cloud computing, tested and tuned by Oracle to provide the best foundation for Java applications ...."

Oracle Global IT Upgrades to Sun Storage Products

2011-11-07T17:00:00+01:00

By way of their slide presentation from Oracle OpenWorld 2011, now available as a download, Cheri Williams, Craig Yappert, and Gowthaman Ranganathan provide an update on Oracle IT Upgrades to Sun Storage Products. The presentation is in three parts:

Overview: Oracle IT and Storage Strategy (reasons for migrating to ZFS Storage Appliance and outline of storage strategy)
Storage Configurations and Performance (specifics of Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance)
Oracle IT Use Cases (includes an overview of ZFS Storage in Product Development)

The presentation then summarizes lessons learned from the migration to ZFS Storage Appliance.

ExalogicTV Channel on YouTube

2011-11-03T16:00:00+01:00

There is now a YouTube channel hosting ExalogicTV, Cristobal Sota blogs on oracle.com. Currently there are 14 offerings, among them:

Extreme Performance Industrial SOA on Exalogic
Why Exalogic?
Oracle Public Cloud Built on Exalogic
Oracle Tuxedo on Exalogic
Java & Coherence on Exalogic
Oracle Weblogic Optimized
How Oracle Exalogic and Coherence Fit
Oracle Exalogic and Real World Examples
What Is Oracle Exalogic?

The listings are dynamic and grow in number almost weekly.

ODA (Oracle Database Appliance) Resources Summary

2011-10-31T16:00:00+01:00

Readers will find a convenient compilation of useful links to resources on the Oracle Database Appliance in a recent eSTEP Blog. The links include a datasheet, a white paper, FAQs, a 3-D demo, the ODA Handbook and ODA documentation manuals, along with three presentations on ODA. Registration and log in are required for certain of these links.

Oracle NoSQL Database Available for Download

2011-10-24T16:00:00+01:00

The Oracle NoSQL Database, part of Oracle's Big Data Portfolio, is now available for download on the Oracle Technical Network. With its simple key-value data model, the highly-available and scalable Oracle NoSQL Database enables customers to easily manage massive amounts of data with dynamic schemas such as web log data, sensor and smart meter data, data gathered for personalization, and data maintained by social networks. Also soon to be available from Oracle is the Oracle Big Data Appliance, an optimized platform for running the Oracle NoSQL Database and Oracle's other Big Data offerings.

Oracle Database 11g Express Edition Quick Tour

2011-10-11T16:00:00+01:00

Explore Oracle Database 11g Express Edition with senior Oracle database administrator Przemyslaw Piotrowski, who provides a quick tour via the Oracle Technetwork. The tour introduces the many new features in Oracle Database 11g Express Edition (XE), the latest version of Oracle's free database, which extend from relatively simple improvements like the PIVOT operator, deferred segment creation, and virtual columns to the groundbreaking adaptive cursor sharing, database resident connection pooling, and edition-based redefinition features. This new release sets a new standard for "express" RDBMS, Piotrowski writes.

Oracle Database Appliance

2011-10-03T16:00:00+01:00

The Oracle Database Appliance, as described in its data sheet, offers customers a fully integrated system of software, servers, storage, and networking in one box that delivers high-availability database services for both homegrown and packaged online transaction processing and data warehousing applications. All the software and hardware components are supported by Oracle, which offers customers a unique pay-as-you-grow software licensing plan that covers upscaling from two processor cores to 24 processor cores without the costs and downtime typical of hardware upgrades.

The Oracle Database Appliance

2011-09-27T16:00:00+01:00

The Oracle Database Appliance simplifies deployment, maintenance, and support of high availability database solutions. Oracle Database Appliance is built from the latest generation of Oracle Database 11g and Oracle Real Application Clusters, and offers customers a fully integrated system of software, servers, storage and networking in a four-rack unit consisting of two server nodes and 12 Terabytes (TB) of raw storage capacity running Oracle Linux and Oracle Database 11g Release 2.

Oracle Q1 Earnings: Up 12% to $8.4 billion

2011-09-20T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle announced fiscal 2012 Q1 GAAP total revenues up 12% to $8.4 billion, while non-GAAP total revenues were up 11% to $8.4 billion. Both GAAP and non-GAAP new software license revenues were up 17% to $1.5 billion. GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 17% to $4.0 billion, while non-GAAP software license updates and product support revenues were up 16% to $4.0 billion. Both GAAP and non-GAAP hardware systems products revenues were down 5% to $1.0 billion.

GAAP operating income was up 40% to $2.7 billion, and GAAP operating margin was 32%. Non-GAAP operating income was up 21% to $3.6 billion, and non-GAAP operating margin was 42%. GAAP net income was up 36% to $1.8 billion, while non-GAAP net income was up 16% to $2.5 billion.

GAAP earnings per share were $0.36, up 34% compared to last year while non-GAAP earnings per share were up 14% to $0.48. GAAP operating cash flow on a trailing twelve month basis was $12.8 billion, up 46% from last year.

Important Oracle Database Product Update

2011-09-13T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle plans to part the curtain on a new database product that will enable customers to optimize their use of Oracle Database 11g. Appearing on the interactive webcast on September 21, 2011 are Oracle executives Mark Hurd, Andrew Mendelsohn, and Judson Althoff. Oracle customers and partners will have the opportunity to join the discussion regarding Oracle's new database product. Registration for this webcast is required.

Core Factor for T4 published

2011-09-07T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle has published an update to the Processor Core Factor Table, according to a blog post by Stefan Hinker. This update lists the still unreleased T4 CPU with a factor of 0.5, which leaves the license cost per socket the same compared to T3 while putting T4 in the same league as SPARC64 VII+ and all current x86 CPUs. A later announcement is expected that will provide performance details, although this core factor seems to confirm that T4 will deliver on Oracle's performance claims.

Thinking About an Upgrade to Oracle 11g?

2011-08-31T16:00:00+01:00

How many reasons would it take to convince you to upgrade to Oracle Database 11g? Mike Dietrich offers six worth thinking about ... maybe more than once:

Oracle support period will end soon or has ended
Oracle EBS, Siebel, Peoplesoft, JD Edwards, even SAP - will require Oracle 11.2 for their currently supported versions

The last word in security will be found only ... that is, only ... in 11.2

Cost savings: 11.2's advanced compression permits users to eliminate superfluous and costly fast disks; and Active DataGuard allows users to employ standby for a number of purposes.

So how does 11.2 look in this light?

Oracle Optimized Solution for Agile Product Lifecycle Management

2011-08-08T16:00:00+01:00

The Oracle Optimized Solution for Agile Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) provides a well-tested, highly validated architecture designed to balance optimal performance with low total cost of ownership (TCO) and high reliability. The solution employs the powerful Oracle Sun Fire X4800 M2 server to run the entire Agile PLM infrastructure in a single virtualized system. Storage issues are simplified with Oracle's Sun ZFS Storage Appliance, resulting in an integrated solution that offers significant cost savings, improved user productivity and reduced risk. Among the benefits this system delivers are:

Significant cost savings from lower hardware acquisition costs, faster deployment, and lower operating costs

Improved user productivity as a result of higher service levels due to the enterprise-class reliability of the Sun Fire X4800 M2 server and the Oracle Solaris operating system

Reduced risk due to the pre-tested environment and simplified deployment of a single hardware server with the Sun ZFS Storage 7420 system

Two Oracle white papers provide further detail on this system: "Oracle Optimized Solution for Agile Product Lifecycle Management," and "Oracle Optimized Solution for Agile Product Lifecycle Management."

Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle WebCenter Suite

2011-08-04T16:00:00+01:00

"The Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle WebCenter Suite enables superior performance, security, and availability for Oracle WebCenter applications at lower costs. Scalability testing on a range of hardware choices provides guidance for a measured approach to either adoption of the system entire, or for adding to an existing enterprise portal infrastructure. This solution demonstrates how Oracle's hardware complements the industry-leading Oracle WebCenter Portal software suite. Two Oracle white papers provide further information on this implementation: "Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g: The Modern user Experience Platform for the Enterprise and the Web" and "Oracle Optimized Solution for Oracle WebCenter Portal--A Technical White Paper."

OVM Templates: Oracle Solaris Container with Oracle Database 11gR2

2011-07-11T16:00:00+01:00

Users can now download Oracle Solaris Virtual Machine (VM) Templates for SPARC and x86 architectures. The several links available on the download page speed the creation of Proof of Concept environments and other evaluation/development tasks by dramatically simplifying the installation process.

For SPARC and x86 there is a new type of Oracle VM Template based on encapsulating an Oracle Solaris 10 Container which can then be attached to any x86 system running Oracle Solaris 10 10/09 or later.

For x86, there are Oracle VM and Oracle VM VirtualBox templates.

Updated Technical Best Practices Whitepaper

2011-07-11T16:00:00+01:00

There are now revisions to an earlier Oracle Technical Best Practices whitepaper that have to do with performance troubleshooting and the software configuration management series, as well as new installation advice, advanced settings, new security settings and advice for both Oracle WebLogic and IBM WebSphere installations. The revised white paper is available for download.

Negotiating with Oracle

2011-07-11T16:00:00+01:00

"How to Achieve Better Results from Your Oracle Negotiation," Duncan Jones's blog post on NetworkWorld.com, reports on the advice from Forrester's Sourcing and Vendor Management (SVM) Leadership Council on how to beat Oracle at its own game, typically described (by Forrester) as given to upselling and overstating costs.

Prepare for Oracle's Central Approval Process
Consider Unlimited Agreements to Gain Leverage
Negotiate Maintenance with a License Purchase or Consider Third-party Support Providers

Oracle sizes its discounts in terms of current transactions, so Forrester advises aggregating needs into that initial deal, even though some items may not be needed immediately. Sourcing managers should have a careful look at Oracle's unlimited license agreement, Forrester suggests, because it "eliminates the need to control and manage license metrics such as users and processors."

Frank Summary of HP/Oracle Dispute By Oracle Lawyers

2011-07-07T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle has made public a motion filed by its lawyers, Latham & Watkins LLP, in response to HP's petition to the court to seal the records of its proceeding against Oracle in connection with support of Itanium technology. Oracle contends that it has no contractual obligation to port its database software to HP-UX microprocessors in contrast to HP's contention that the amicable resolution of the litigation over Oracle's employment of former HP executive Mark Hurd by implication represents an obligation to that end on Oracle's part. Oracle's lawyers also include in their motion the effect on the supposed partnership between HP and Oracle of naming as CEO Leo Apotheker, ex-CEO of SAP, against whom Oracle had won a case for theft of intellectual property. They mention as well the altered posture that HP adopted at once on hearing the news of Oracle's purchase of Sun Microsystems. A number of precedents supporting the need for a civil proceeding such as this one by HP against Oracle to be conducted in public are also cited.

Configuring Oracle Solaris Cluster Software With Oracle RAC/CRS and Sun ZFS Storage Appliance 7000 Systems

2011-06-27T16:00:00+01:00

A blog post on the Oracle TechNetwork by J. Randriam describes the installation procedure for a 3-node Sun Cluster 3.2 01/09 or Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3 (or later) configuration running with Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC)/Cluster Ready Services (CRS) 11.1.0.7 and a Sun ZFS Storage 7120 System. Contents of the post include:

Initial Preparation on the Sun ZFS Storage 7120 Using the CLI
Creating NFS Filesystems Using the Sun ZFS Storage 7120 CLI
Accessing the NFS Filesystems From the Cluster Nodes
Accessing the iSCSI LUNs From the Cluster Nodes
Adding a Quorum Device
Configuring Oracle RAC / CRS in the Cluster

The author notes that, while the 7120 was used in this configuration, the procedure should be applicable to the entire Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage series.

Database Cloning Using Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliance and Oracle Data Guard

2011-06-09T16:00:00+01:00

Responding to the challenges facing database administrators charged with meeting the requirements of application development and code testing within a production environment, Oracle has developed Oracle Data Guard and the Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliance to provide an efficient solution for cloning databases that provides disaster protection and high availability for mission-critical databases. The operation of these solutions is described in the white paper "Maximum Availability Architecture: Oracle Best Practices for High Availability." The document describes how the Oracle Data Guard feature is deployed in conjunction with the snapshot and cloning features of the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance, enabling easy and efficient database cloning of a standby database, including as well the Oracle-validated best practices and scripting to automate the database cloning operation.

Oracle Exadata Database Machine Command Reference

2011-06-06T16:00:00+01:00

Users new to Oracle Exadata Database Machine (and even some old hands) will surely find the four-part guide authored by Arup Nanda called Series: Oracle Exadata Command Reference a helpful reference. Contents include:

Part 1: Jumpstarting on Exadata
Part 2: Command Categories, Configuration, and Basic Commands
Part 3: Storage Management
Part 4: Metrics and Reporting

Nanda assures readers that they will " ... learn all the commands necessary to administer the Exadata Database Machine, especially the storage-related commands" within the pages of the guide.

Oracle Completes Certification of Oracle RAC 11gR2 (with Clusterware) on Oracle Solaris 10 Containers ("Zones").

2011-05-26T16:00:00+01:00

Oracle has posted a tabular list of Supported Virtualization and Partitioning Technologies for Oracle Database and RAC Product Releases that identifies those virtualization/partitioning technologies already supported and reaffirms the policies that each new OS and its complementary virtualization/partitioning technology, must be certified by Oracle and, further, that each new OS plus its virtualization/partitioning solution must be guaranteed by the appropriate hardware vendor to be backward compatible to the version listed in the tables cited in the above link.

Running Oracle 11G R2 On OEL 6

2011-05-19T16:00:00+01:00

"A Database Detour" is the title Antony Reynolds gives his blog on running Oracle Database 11gR2 on Oracle Enterprise Linux 6, where he provides the details involved in building a new VirtualBox environment and then installing the as yet uncertified database on OEL6. Because he is a "middleware guy" Reynolds explains that he set the database to automatically start along with the OS. He provides the code samples used in this installation which, when completed, allowed him to take a snapshot of the VM and to start building an SOA installation.

Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Exadata Database Machine Adopted by healthAllianceNew Zealand

2011-05-03T16:00:00+01:00

healthAlliance New Zealand Ltd (HANZL) has deployed its upgraded Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.2 across an Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 that allows healthAlliance to deliver a highly robust, scalable and pre-integrated platform to an expanding number of District Health Boards (DHBs). Oracle reports that the organization also employs a second Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 at a separate physical site to provide a shared services platform for other business applications and serve as a disaster recovery site for Oracle E-Business Suite. All the DHBs joining HANZL's shared services platform will be using Oracle E-Business Suite 12.1.2, including Oracle E-Business Suite Financial Management, Oracle E-Business Suite Advanced Procurement and Oracle E-Business Suite Supply Chain Management, according to Oracle. Lab performance testing has of Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 on HANZL data revealed a significant increase in application performance and demonstrated the viability of transforming reporting capabilities from batch job to real-time and on-demand. Coupled with the reduced deployment and integration costs associated with Oracle Exadata's pre-integrated package of servers, storage, networking, and software, led to adopt Oracle Exadata Database Machines for its core infrastructure, Oracle said.

A Tool for Determining the Contents of Oracle Flash Cache

2011-05-02T16:00:00+01:00

In a blog post on the Pythian site Christo Kutrovsky writes about a tool of his own devising that makes it possible to determine the contents of a flash cache. Such a tool is necessary, he writes, because Oracle provides only a 'list flashcachecontent' command in the cellcli tool, which has no summarization options, and displays only object numbers. His tool allows users to query the cell flash content on all cells, in a manner that is similar to querying the buffer cache (db_cache) contents in v$bh. The tool uses Oracle Database 11g's new External table feature 'preprocessor' and a perl parser script that executes the commands simultaneously on all cell nodes. The blog goes over installation of the tool and interpretation of results.