New Oracle software aims to fix "disasters" faster
Oracle today said it is building new software designed to keep its customers' e-commerce sites up and running, even when a major system fails.
Oracle is claming the software, called Oracle Parallel Fail Safe, can restore a failed Web site to working condition in 30 seconds. That recovery time is about 10 times faster than previous Oracle technology, said Bob Shimp, senior director of product marketing for Oracle's Internet platform.
The new technology runs on Oracle's 8i database management software and Hewlett-Packard servers. Oracle said it plans to support other server manufacturers, including Sun Microsystems and Compaq Computer, within six months. With the new software, Oracle claims that if one server goes down, data processing will switch over to another nearby server to ensure transactions continue. If a company's entire collection of servers go down in one city, the software can quickly route all transactions to another collection of servers the company owns elsewhere, Shimp said. "They can cut over in seconds," Shimp said. "If you're on a network on a Web browser trying to buy something at a 'dot com' store, you won't notice." Such so-called disaster recovery software has been available for years to protect business computing systems running on mainframes and other large systems from natural disasters and power outages. The concept is slowly gaining hold in the e-commerce world to ensure that increasingly complex, and important, Web sites stay up and running. Oracle's new software is notable for the speed with which it can restore transaction processing, analysts said.
Patricia Seybold Group analyst Anne Thomas Manes said the new technology puts Oracle ahead of its competitors in the database market, including IBM, Sybase, Informix and Microsoft, in ensuring that computing systems stay up and running. Oracle previously had similar technology, the low-end "Windows NT Fail Safe" and the higher-end Oracle Parallel Server, but those products were much slower, she said. "To do a full recovery within 30 seconds is remarkable," Manes said. "Oracle is saying you can keep a live snapshot of the database, which can be instantly recovered and put back online. In case of catastrophic error, it will actually take a mirror image of the database and flash that over to other machines, so the other machines can pick up where the first machine left off."
Oracle did not disclose pricing for the new software. As part of today's announcement, Oracle said it also has improved its other software to ensure better reliability of its e-commerce Web sites and computing systems. The company has reworked its Oracle Application Server, Oracle Integration Server and Oracle Internet Directory to better handle more transactions and more users, a spokeswoman said. The three products now can better support the ability to switch over to other servers if they go down.
An application server sits between a Web browser and the back-end database and runs the transactions. The Oracle Integration Server helps link a company's computing software together so they can communicate. And the Internet Directory serves as a repository of information concerning users, systems, and network devices.
Oracle also added that it has 15,000 consultants and 6,000 support staff available to help businesses build and run these systems.Oracle 8i gets new security additions
Oracle has added new security features into its flagship database software to help businesses protect information stored in their e-commerce Web sites and computing systems.
Oracle this week released an update to its Internet-focused Oracle 8i database with security features that can encrypt data from the desktop computer, through the Internet, and into the database, Oracle executives said.
"At no point, from the desktop all the way through to the database, is information vulnerable," said Bob Shimp, Oracle's senior director of product marketing. "If a hacker breaks through and rummages around, anything they take inside a database will be encrypted. They would have to crack every single credit card number."
Oracle 8i, originally released last March, is Oracle's attempt to cut into sales of Microsoft's Windows NT server operating system. With built-in software development tools, directory software, and the ability to run Java software code, company executives have touted it as the only product companies need to build and run business software over the Internet.
The new security features allow businesses to store all of their suppliers' and partners' information on one single database. While they all share a common database, the suppliers and partners will only be allowed to see their own account information, Shimp said.
Businesses can also control access to information, depending on the user's location, Shimp said. An employee working at the office can access more corporate information than an employee connecting remotely from home, he said.
As reported earlier, the update to the database includes new data warehousing tools, which extract information from databases and allow companies to analyze the information and build reports.
The new version also supports Java 2 Enterprise Edition, which includes the Enterprise JavaBeans programming language and the ability to debug Java software code, while the application is running in the database.
A key piece in Oracle--called Internet File System--is about a year behind schedule and is not expected to ship until this summer. The Internet File System, which would replace customers' use of the Windows NT file system, will store and manage Web pages, as well as word processing files, spreadsheets and multimedia items within the database.
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