JANUARY/FEBRU ARY 2 0 0 7 O R A C L E.

C O M / O R A C LEMA GA ZI NE

ALWAYS
AVAILABLE
ORACLE HIGH-AVAILABILITY
TECHNOLOGIES DRIVE BUSINESS 24/7

GO XML/39

SMBs EXPAND
TO MEET
DEMANDS/44
SECURITY GOES
MAINSTREAM/71

JF07_Cover.indd 5 11/17/06 3:47:47 PM

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  Number of silos in which your customer data resides.
Coincidentally, also the number of totally different
definitions you have for “customer.”

definition —
Embarcadero solutions help manage data enterprise
wide, enabling you to build and communicate an
architecture of your data assets so you always
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everything gets simpler. You and your business are
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Standards can be defined and enforced. Data redun-

dancy is eliminated. Enterprise Data Management
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 CONTENTS VOLU M E XXI , I SSUE 1

F EATU RES
GO
XML
ALWAYS Business transactions on the Web and
content-rich applications have put new

AVAILABLE demands on enterprise databases. XML—

the markup language that is used to store
and exchange all kinds of data—can meet
Does your business depend
these demands. Find out how Oracle XML
on expensive hardware for
DB manages diverse XML data.
disaster insurance? New
—David Baum
high-availability technologies
run on inexpensive commodity /39
hardware, provide disaster

EXPANDING TO
insurance, and improve the
performance of day-to-day
operations. See how Oracle MEET DEMANDS
helps growing businesses Small and medium businesses still have to
stay up and running. meet big demands—for fast performance, high
—Alan Joch
availability, data security,
/30 and scalability—usually
under tight budgets. Discover
Cover: Image by Corbis, enhanced what Oracle is doing to help
by Stephanie Lee SMBs meet these challenges,
satisfy their customers, and grow and thrive under
changing market conditions. —David A. Kelly

/44
DE PAR T M E NTS

From Our Readers / 9

Readers tell us what they think.
From the Editor / 11
12 AT OR AC LE
Events / 12
Available and working
Find out about current and
—Tom Haunert
upcoming industry events.
Oracle Resources / 13
Here’s your guide to Oracle’s
broadband, education, and
support offerings, plus what’s
new at Oracle.
OTN Bulletin / 14
Learn what’s happening with Oracle’s most
dynamic online community.
Oracle News Briefs / 15
Oracle News / 21
Oracle is offering enterprise-class Linux
support—the same level of support that
Oracle provides for the database—through
the Unbreakable Linux program.

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 3

JF07_TOC.indd 3 11/20/06 3:51:48 PM

 CONTENTS

57 TEC HNOLOGY

P L/S QL P R AC TIC ES
The Right Place for PL/SQL / 57
Best practices for PL/SQL location, location, location
—Steven Feuerstein

23 CH A NNEL S
Commitment / 23
R EC OV ERY
Recover in a Flash / 59
Reduce database recovery time, using the Oracle flash
The Nature Conservancy protects
recovery area. —Arup Nanda
endangered species and drinking water.
Partner News / 24
AS K TOM
GridApp Systems, IBM, EMC, Adobe, HP,
Intel, Itemfield, Genpact, Turnkey Solutions, On Top-n and Pagination Queries / 63
NAVTEQ, Application Security, Inc., Our technologist gets more results using ROW_NUMBER,
and SilverStorm. RANK, and DENSE_RANK. —Tom Kyte
Book Beat / 24
Peer-to-Peer / 27
Steve Karam,
Nicolas Gasparotto,
Dave Moore
Cutting Edge / 29
Encrypted hard drives and perching planes

67
49
R ES OUR C ES
Oracle Certified Partner Index / 67
D EVEL O PER Advertisers’ Index / 70
O PEN SO U RCE
Embedding Open Source / 49

69
The Oracle Berkeley DB family of products exemplifies
Oracle’s open source commitment. —Rich Schwerin
C OMMENT
F RA MEWO RKS
Modeling Tables and Components / 51 IN THE FIELD
Maintain your data-centric business services with Listening to You / 69
visual diagrams. —Steve Muench IOUG surveys provide guidance for expanding
databases and open source software issues.
O D P.NET —Ari Kaplan
Using PL/SQL Associative Arrays / 53
Bring the power of PL/SQL stored procedures to ODP.NET. ALL S EC UR E
—Mark A. Williams Security Goes Mainstream / 71
Security is too important to be left to experts.
B RO WSER-B A SED —Mary Ann Davidson
Sizing Up Performance / 55
ANALY S T’ S C OR NER
Tips and techniques for optimal Oracle Application
Express performance —Mike Hichwa The Right Stuff / 72
Small businesses can compete on a big scale if
they have enterprise-caliber software.
—David Baum

4 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF07_TOC.indd 4 11/20/06 3:51:51 PM

 When information
comes together,
Blue Rhino sizzles.

Information lives at Blue Rhino, a midsize company that had a king-size problem. As the #1 brand in propane tank exchange, their information
storage needs were doubling every year. But their IT budget wasn’t. They chose an EMC® solution that gave them less downtime, faster
backups, and quicker recovery times. The entire package, hardware and software, delivered a high degree of flexibility at an affordable
price, and allowed them to keep their focus on their customers. Read the Blue Rhino profile at www.EMC.com/BlueRhino.
To see what EMC can do for you, talk to your EMC Velocity2 Partner or call 866-796-6369.

EMC2, EMC, and where information lives are registered trademarks of EMC Corporation. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. © 2006 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.
 ED ITOR IA L

Editor in Chief Tom Haunert tom.haunert@oracle.com

Senior Managing Editor Caroline Kvitka caroline.kvitka@oracle.com
Features Editor Kay Keppler kay.keppler@oracle.com
Contributing Editor and Writer Blair Campbell
Editor in Chief, OTN Justin Kestelyn justin.kestelyn@oracle.com
Technology Advisors Tom Kyte, Christopher Beck
Contributing Writers Marta Bright, Liz Campbell, Ed DeJesus, Jeff Erickson, Andre Kvitka,
Aaron Lazenby, Fred Sandsmark, Rich Schwerin

D ES IGN
Senior Creative Director Susan Olsen
Design Director Richard Merchán

PUBLISH ING
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6 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

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Your corrections, your opinions, and your requests:
Here’s your forum for telling us what’s right and
wrong in each issue of Oracle Magazine, and for
letting us know what you want to read.
MORE DIGITAL
Thank you for sending the digital copy
of the November/December 2006 issue
of Oracle Magazine. Can you send digital
copies of previous issues of Oracle
Magazine? How can I get these older
magazine issues?
Rojan Shrestha
exchhattu@yahoo.com
Digital back issues from the start of the
digital subscription program are available
to digital subscribers only. When viewing
a digital issue, digital subscribers can click
the “Archives” tab to access back issues.
Oracle Magazine back issues are also
available to all in HTML format at oracle
.com/oramag/oracle.
Any reader of Oracle Magazine who
wants to change the preference of print
or digital format can do so on the printed
subscription card or the online subscrip-
tion form at www.submag.com/sub/
oc?pk=orafaq.
PRO PARTITIONING
I started reading the article “Partition
Decisions” by Arup Nanda (September/
October 2006, oracle.com/technology/
oramag/oracle/06-sep/o56partition
.html) with only mild interest, but I
can’t describe in words how wonderful
and useful the article is. It is written
from a real-world point of view few
other articles could lay claim to.
This is exactly the type of article
I would like to see in the magazine.
There are articles, and there are articles,
where the authors seem to align very
closely with the real-world issues
of the readers. For instance, in this
article, the author has clearly moved
JF07_Readers.indd 9
f r o m o u r READERS
away from repeating what’s available
elsewhere as commodities—the syntax
and all that good stuff. Instead he
describes an issue faced by architects
and designers day in and day out.
The layout of the article is particularly
attractive—with the decision points
spelled out as they would be discussed
in a real meeting.
I have to mention this: Just around
the time this article was published,
we were going through a series of
meetings to decide on our own parti-
tioning strategy, and the resemblance
of the proceedings was, well, uncanny,
to say the least! This article helped
us significantly in our decision-making
process, especially the section on
data movement.
Please continue to publish these
types of articles. They are not just rep-
etition of the ideas available in manuals.
Brian Lentini
brianlentini@excite.com
I would like to thank you for the
very informative article by Arup Nanda
on Oracle Partitioning (“Partition
Decisions.”) We as an organization
have been grappling with Oracle
Partitioning issues and best practices
for a while, and this article was
very timely.
Mike Stearman
michael_t_stearman@newyorklife.com
We received many responses regarding
Oracle Partitioning and this article. Thanks
to all who sent feedback on Arup Nanda’s
“Partition Decisions.”
ORACLE MAGAZINE
GO WEEKLY
I am a regular reader of your magazine.
I suggest that you publish the maga-
zine once a week instead of every two
months. This way you can publish data-
base technology details from fundamen-
tals to advanced levels.
Km. Ravichandran
krv@thechennaisilks.com
BEGINNING WITH THE PAST
I subscribe to Oracle Magazine, and I
am new to the Oracle PL/SQL language.
I want to see past issues of Oracle
Magazine to see basic and important
PL/SQL information.
Chandra Kishore Bakshi
chandrakishore2007@gmail.com
There’s an index of past Oracle Magazine
PL/SQL articles at oracle.com/technology/
oramag/oracle/plsql. There’s also an index
of past OTN PL/SQL articles at oracle
.com/technology/pub/articles/tech_dev
.html#plsql. And the PL/SQL technology
center at oracle.com/technology/tech/
pl_sql includes links to additional PL/SQL
articles, as well as links to book excerpts,
sample code, Oracle University PL/SQL
classes, and the PL/SQL discussion forum.
send mail to the EDITOR
Send your opinions about what you read in Oracle
Magazine, and suggestions for possible technical
articles, to opubedit_us@oracle.com.
Or click on the Write the Editors link on our Web
site, oracle.com/oraclemagazine.
Letters may be edited for length and clarity and
may be published in any medium. We consider
any communications we receive publishable.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 9
11/17/06 12:02:28 PM
OMAG0506p024 24 3/8/06 10:55:30 AM
 f r o m t h e EDITOR
Available and Working
Inexpensive resources for high availability improve enterprise performance.
t 5 p.m. on October 17, 1989, I was ending my
workday in the San Francisco Bay Area, backing up
my PC data to tape. A few minutes after 5 p.m., my
tape backup still in progress, a major earthquake hit
the area. There were fatalities, and bridges, roadways, and
homes collapsed. At my office the damage was minor—it
included shattered windows and a power outage.
Power was restored to the office the next morning, and
when I went back into work, my focus shifted from trying
to find out if my friends and family were OK after the quake
(they were) to seeing if I still had a working PC, a working
tape backup, and the data I had been trying to preserve.
PC hardware in 1989 was not nearly as reliable as it is
today, and for its capabilities, it was also quite expensive.
Some of my concern about my PC came from my company; I
worked at a PC hardware company that consistently warned
its customers—and employees—that interrupting power to
disk and tape drives while they were operating could cause
permanent drive failure.
Luckily my hardware and data survived. I did not need
to recover data from an earlier backup—but I was certainly
glad that I had an archive of tape backups, just in case—and
didn’t need to requisition expensive new hardware.
UPPING AVAILABILITY
DBAs and system administrators deal with backup and recov-
ery in much more reliable and sophisticated ways than I did
in on my old desktop PC. Tape and disk backups are cen-
trally managed and widely used, and powerful backup and
recovery capabilities are giving DBAs opportunities to recover
data without ever going to the backup tapes.
Oracle Flashback technologies, for example, including
Flashback Query, Flashback Table, and Flashback Database,
READ more about
Oracle Database high availability
oracle.com/database/high-availability.html
oracle.com/technology/deploy/availability
Oracle Real Application Clusters
oracle.com/start keyword: RAC2
Flashback technologies
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/flashback
Oracle Secure Backup
oracle.com/database/secure-backup.html
JF07_EdNote.indd 11
give DBAs the ability to easily pinpoint and “flash back” to
data in a previous state using log information. And the flash
recovery area—automatically managed disk space for recovery-
related data files—can allow for faster recovery than going to
a backup tape and also simplifies Oracle Recovery Manager
(RMAN) administration. For more information on Oracle
Flashback technology, see the nextSTEPS box below, and for
more information on using the flash recovery area, check out
Arup Nanda’s article, “Recover in a Flash,” on page 59.
HIGH AVAILABILITY MEANS HIGH PERFORMANCE
While businesses still need to go to disk or tape to recover
from data errors—I had to have Support restore an acciden-
tally deleted network folder for me last week—the demands
of today’s 24/7 businesses have of necessity eliminated the
time frame for recovery from hardware failure. Today’s busi-
nesses don’t stop running at 5 p.m., and they can’t stop
running because of a failed server.
In his feature article, “Always Available,” on page 30, Alan
Joch reports on Oracle customers who are using Oracle Real
Application Clusters (Oracle RAC) and Oracle Data Guard
on inexpensive commodity hardware—not just as insurance
for high availability, but to add continuous computing power
to the enterprise. Oracle RAC automatically redistributes the
workload of a failed server to the remaining healthy servers,
and it enables companies to scale up—to add servers to the
cluster to support more users and more transactions. Oracle
Data Guard provides a “standby” database, ideal for a sec-
ondary site, but companies use synchronized, data-error-free
Oracle Data Guard standby databases for ad hoc queries,
backups, reporting, and other activities for better performance
of these activities and the transactions at the primary site.
In 1989, backup to disk was not a common solution, in
part because of the high cost of this storage. Today, both
disk and tape backups offer fast recovery and provide inex-
pensive archive solutions that can also meet compliance
requirements using technologies such as Oracle RMAN
and Oracle Secure Backup. And enterprise high availability
that once required proprietary and expensive mainframe
and minicomputers now starts with inexpensive commodity
hardware, and, along with technologies such as Oracle RAC
and Oracle Data Guard, provides both high availability and
high performance.
Tom Haunert, Editor in Chief
tom.haunert@oracle.com
ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 11
11/20/06 3:43:30 PM
 a t O r a c l e EVENTS
ORACLE USERS
GROUPS
Packerland Local Users Group Meeting

Technology Events
Conferences and sessions to help you stay on the cutting edge
RSA Conference 2007
February 5–9
San Francisco
The RSA Conference is the largest, most
comprehensive gathering of analysts,
technology providers, service providers,
and end consumers in information security.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison will give a keynote
address at this weeklong educational forum.
Visit www.rsaconference.com/2007/us
for more information.
Los Angeles County Technology Desktop Conference 2007
Week 2007 February 20–22, Online
January 22–27, Los Angeles County, Boasting presentations by dozens of Oracle
California experts and with tracks for BI, data warehous-
Technology Week is a series of events show- ing, application development, and more, the
casing the depth and growth of technology Desktop Conference bills itself as the most
companies throughout Los Angeles County. comprehensive virtual conference of the year.
Events are held at a variety of countywide Learn more at www.desktopconference.org.
locations. Learn more and register at
www.latechweek.com. Gartner Business Intelligence
& Information Management
GTC Southwest 2007 Summit
January 29–February 1, Austin, Texas February 27–28, Sydney, Australia
The Government Technology Conference This event highlights how BI applications and
provides business and technology learning data infrastructure can affect financial and
opportunities for government employees and business performance. Technology’s role in
provides opportunities to network with peers compliance, the continuing data explosion, and
from state and local governments and meet complex business environments are on the
with top technology vendors to the govern- agenda. Sign up at www.gartner.com/
ment. Get details at www.govtech.net/gtc/ 2_events/conferences/bi1a.jsp.
index.php/GTCSouthwest2007.
OPP2007
Gartner Business Intelligence February 28–March 1
Summit San Mateo, California
January 30–February 1, London The Oracle Development Tools User Group
Aimed at IT and business professionals who sponsors this “seriously practical” Oracle
are defining a business intelligence (BI) strat- PL/SQL Programming Conference for Oracle
egy, optimizing BI applications, and managing technologists focusing on PL/SQL program-
BI issues, this event highlights new research ming. It includes two days of intensive train-
in organizational competencies, corporate ing by Steven Feuerstein, PL/SQL evangelist,
ALLISON LEVENSON
January 10, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
www.wi-plug.org/calendar.htm
Georgia Oracle Users Group
January 11, Dunwoody, Georgia
www.gouser.org
Nashville Oracle Users Group Meeting
January 17, Nashville, Tennessee
www.noug.net/meeting.htm
Sacramento Oracle Users Group
Meeting
January 17, West Sacramento,
California
www.sacoug.org
Twin Cities Oracle Users Group
Quarterly Meeting
January 18, St. Louis Park, Minnesota
www.tcoug.org/calendar
Atlanta Oracle Applications Users
Group Meeting
January 19, Dunwoody, Georgia
www.atloaug.org
Northeast Ohio Oracle Users Group
Business Meeting
January 19, Independence, Ohio
www.neooug.org/generaltab/
generaltab.shtml?events
UKOUG Open Source Seminar
January 23, Berkshire, England
www.ukoug.co.uk/calendar/show_events
.jsp?year=2007&month=01&day=23
Philadelphia Area Oracle User Group
Quarterly Meeting
January 24, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
philadelphia.oracle.ioug.org
Dallas Oracle Users Group Data
Warehousing Certification Class
February 7–9, Dallas, Texas
www.doug.org/meetings2006.cfm
Northern California Oracle Users Group
Winter Conference
February 8, Redwood Shores,
California
www.nocoug.org
Ottawa Oracle User Group Training
Day 2007
February 9, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
www.oug-ottawa.org
North Carolina Oracle Users
Group Meeting
February 16, Morrisville, North Carolina
www.ncoug.com/ncoug_upcoming_
events.htm
eventsLOCATOR

performance management, data quality, appli-
cation analytics, and service-oriented architec-
tures. Get more information at www.gartner
.com/2_events/conferences/bie8i.jsp.
Quest Software; Bryn Llewellyn, PL/SQL Oracle Events
oracle.com/events
product manager, Server Technologies, at
Oracle; and other PL/SQL experts. Learn more Locate user groups
oracle.com/technology/collaboration/user_group
and register at www.odtugopp07.com.

12 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF07_Events.indd 12 11/17/06 11:49:32 AM

 a t O r a c l e RESOURCES
What’s New at Oracle
The latest Webcasts, support offers, courses, and more
NEW WEBCASTS
Oracle Presents: Who Stole Mark Drake?
oracle.com/markdrake
Who stole Mark Drake’s identity? From
San Francisco to Singapore, the hunt is
on and time is running out. Oracle’s inter-
active mystery shows how Oracle Fusion
Middleware can help businesses manage
risk and gain business insight.
Oracle Security Strategy Briefing
oracle.com/pls/ebn/live_viewer.main
?p_direct=yes&p_shows_id=5029726
Oracle President Charles Phillips discusses
Oracle’s strategy for a complete, unified,
and standards-based security solution to
meet the ever-growing security threat that
organizations face.
Best Practices for Securing Oracle Databases
oracle.com/pls/ebn/live_viewer.main
?p_direct=yes&p_shows_id=4967568
John Heimann of Oracle Security Program
management and Roger Raj of Oracle
Protected Enterprise discuss database
security challenges, implementing a data-
base security checklist, and developing a
critical patch update strategy.
Extracting More from Identity Management
Using an Application-Centric Approach
oracle.com/pls/ebn/live_viewer.main
?p_direct=yes&p_shows_id=4975807
Identity management is a driving force in
many implementations today, especially as
it relates to security and compliance. Find
out why Oracle is taking a new approach to
identity management.
ORACLE SUPPORT
Configuration Support Manager
oracle.com/support/premier/
advanced-support-technologies/
my-configurations-projects.html
Configuration Support Manager, a pro-
active automated support capability
included in Oracle Premier Support, offers
you a simpler way to track, manage, and
support your Oracle configurations while
JF07_Resources.indd 13
reducing the risk of unplanned system
downtime. Diagnose system issues before
they become critical, increase system
performance, resolve problems faster, and
reduce IT risks and costs.
ORACLE ON DEMAND
Oracle On Demand Perspectives
oracle.com/pls/ebn/swf_viewer.load?
p_shows_id=4915801
Gartner analysts predict that 30 percent of
software will be delivered on demand by
2010. Take a look at the business, technol-
ogy, and financial reasons behind Oracle
On Demand to determine if it is right for
your business.
Oracle On Demand for Siebel CRM
oracle.com/ondemand/
on-demand-siebel-crm.html
Oracle’s On Demand offering now includes
Oracle On Demand for Siebel CRM, giving
Siebel CRM customers the flexibility and
choice of managed applications, hosting,
and software management services.
NEW PODCASTS
Designing the Dynamic Data Center
oracle.com/techcasts
Dr. Bernd Kosch, vice president of alliances
for Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, offers a
progress report on the evolution of grid com-
puting and associated standards, as well as
the story behind the formation of the new
Open Grid Forum standards organization.
Focus on Identity Management: Standards
oracle.com/techcasts
Prateek Mishra, product manager for Oracle
Identity Management and coauthor of the
Security Assurance Markup Language
specification, explains the impact of that
specification and other standards on iden-
tity management deployments.
Focus on Identity Management: Application-
Centric Identity Management
oracle.com/techcasts
What is application-centric identity man-
ORACLE MAGAZINE
agement, and why should architects and
developers care about it? Nishant Kaushik,
a technical staff member from the Oracle
Identity Management team, provides insight.
Inside a “Power” SMB
oracle.com/techcasts
Jody McDonough, CE0 and vice president
of development at enetrix, discusses why
identity management, business intelligence,
and compliance architecture are important
for his small business.
Oracle Analytic Applications Strategy
oracle.com/appcasts
Chris Leone, Oracle group vice president,
applications strategy, discusses Oracle’s
analytic applications offerings, product road
map, and benefits to customers.
Oracle Fusion Update
oracle.com/appcasts
Jesper Andersen, Oracle senior vice
president, applications strategy, provides an
update on Oracle Fusion Applications and
discusses the benefits of moving to current
releases and what customers can do to
prepare for Oracle Fusion Applications.
ORACLE UNIVERSITY
Oracle Identity Manager: Develop Identity
Provisioning
oracle.com/education
(Search keywords: Identity Manager)
In this five-day course, learn how to use
Oracle Identity Manager Design Console
and Oracle Identity Manager Administration
and User Console to build, customize, and
use Oracle Identity Manager connectors for
provisioning and reconciliation.
OracleAS 10g R3: Oracle ADF for Forms/
4GL Developers
oracle.com/education
(Search keywords: Oracle ADF)
Learn to build applications using Oracle
Application Development Framework
Business Components (ADF BC), Oracle ADF
Faces, and Oracle ADF databinding with
Oracle JDeveloper 10g Release 3.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 13
11/17/06 12:03:19 PM
 a t O r a c l e OTN BULLETIN
When Keywords Collide
OTN 3.0 beta brings semantic search to Oracle Technology Network users.
n the previous edition of this column
(November/December 2006), I
described the so-called semantic
search infrastructure behind the
virtual press room at Oracle.com. I am
happy to report that this infrastructure
has been extended to power a new
“OTN 3.0” Web site beta. This proof
of concept, currently running in paral-
lel with the production version of the
Oracle Technology Network (OTN)
site (and based on a subset of available
content), will generate crucial commu-
nity feedback and, down the road, help
us create a template for a new semantic
search–powered OTN.
The differences between OTN 3.0
and the current OTN site are too numer-
ous to describe here, but to a user,
the site meets the bar set by Arthur C.
Clarke’s famous aphorism, “Any suffi-
ciently advanced technology is indistin-
guishable from magic.” In OTN 3.0 beta,
the user is in complete control of the
information taxonomy—in other words,
users have the ability to control (well,
“filter,” really) the content of any given
page, rather than being guided through
an endless series of static paths.
As I explained in a blog post about
this subject (“The Semantic Web Runs
on Oracle,” blogs.oracle.com/otn/
2006/09/08#a220), the problem with
garden-variety search is that you don’t
know what you’re missing—your search
results will only be as good as your key-
words. With semantic search—and OTN
3.0 is essentially a semantic search view
of OTN content—you needn’t supply
any keywords at all; the back end
already knows more of them than you
could ever hope to provide.
OTN 3.0 also contains interest-
ing visualizations that allow you, for
example, to see who the most active dis-
cussion forums posters are in a “cloud”
14 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
JF07_OTN_x.indd 14
view, and to view the posts of any given
Oracle ACE across a certain subject or
time period. This is great stuff.
Explore OTN 3.0 beta at oracle.com/
technology/otnsemanticweb in early 2007.
We hope to see your comments in the
Beta Feedback Discussion Forum.
“GREATEST HITS” OF 2006
One of the guilty pleasures of a new year
is “contemplating the silent highway,” as
I like to say—looking back at the previ-
ous year and determining what it can
teach us about the new one.
That process takes physical form in
the OTN’s Greatest Hits CD—a library of
the most-popular content published by
OTN during the calendar year—distrib-
uted annually at Oracle OpenWorld. For
example, here are the most-popular tech-
nical articles published last year across
the developer, DBA, and architect roles:
1. “Oracle Database 10g: Top DBA
Features,” by Arup Nanda (Oracle ACE)
2. “Installing Oracle Database 10g on
Linux x86,” by John Smiley
3. “Best Practice PL/SQL,” by Steven
Feuerstein (Oracle ACE)
4. “SOA Best Practices: The BPEL
Cookbook,” by various authors
5. “Build Your Own Oracle RAC 10g
Cluster,” by Jeffrey Hunter (Oracle ACE)
6. “Build a .NET Application on Oracle
Database,” by John Paul Cook
7. “Installing PHP and the Oracle 10g
Instant Client,” by Christopher Jones
8. “An Introduction to Linux Shell
Scripting for DBAs,” by Casimir Saternos
9. “Guide to Linux File Command
Mastery,” by Sheryl Calish
10.“An Introduction to Java Map
Collection Classes,” by Jack Shirazi
So, what does this list tell us? First,
it tells us that OTN users are interested
in practical, actionable content. (No sur-
prise there.) It suggests that the relatively
BY JU STIN KESTELYN
advanced design concept of service-
oriented architecture (SOA) is attract-
ing measurable attention across Oracle’s
installed base. But most important, it sug-
gests that .NET and PHP are continuing
their progress in joining Java and PL/SQL
as top-tier “communities of interest” in
the Oracle world. Now, that’s important
information for the coming year.
IDENTITY MANAGEMENT CRASH COURSE
Identity management—the centralized
management of the user identity life-
cycle across the enterprise—is an area
demanding serious attention.
Oracle’s new Focus on Identity
Management podcast series offers valu-
able introductions to key concepts such
as fine-grained authorization, virtual
directories, and attestation.
Download the podcasts, or subscribe
to Oracle TechCasts via RSS, at oracle
.com/technology/techcasts. O
Justin Kestelyn (justin.kestelyn@oracle.com) is the
editor in chief of Oracle Technology Network.
OTN home
oracle.com/technology
OTN headlines
oracle.com/technology/pub/news
Free software downloads
oracle.com/technology/software
Documentation
oracle.com/technology/documentation
Technology Centers
oracle.com/technology/tech
Podcasts
oracle.com/techcasts
Technical articles
oracle.com/technology/pub/articles
Blogs
blogs.oracle.com
Discussion forums
forums.oracle.com
11/28/06 12:20:29 PM
 a t O r a c l e BRIEFS

Oracle Product News

An update on new product releases and key product enhancements
ORACLE WEBCENTER SUITE DELIVERS to-use, task-oriented, rich-client user many different applications and tools
UNIFIED USER EXPERIENCE interface through which they can access that aren’t aware of each other and

O racle WebCenter Suite 10g Release

3, a new component of Oracle
Fusion Middleware, provides a unified,
context-aware user experience that inte-
grates a full set of enterprise services.
Users can access business applications,
structured and unstructured content,
business intelligence, enterprise search,
business processes, and communication
and collaboration services. By breaking
down the boundaries among Web-based
portals, enterprise applications, and Web
2.0 technologies, Oracle WebCenter
Suite enables the rapid creation of flex-
ible, context-sensitive work processes.
“Information workers need an easy-
information and enterprise applica-
tions, quickly execute transactions
within enterprise applications, and
share information and collaborate with
other people over a variety of chan-
nels—messaging, Voice over IP, discus-
sions—using familiar desktop tools,”
says Thomas Kurian, senior vice presi-
dent, Oracle Fusion Middleware.
Oracle WebCenter Suite represents
the next step in advanced user-
interaction environments and will
be the basis for a new generation of
context-aware applications designed to
improve user productivity. Tasks that
currently involve jumping between
don’t share content or context can be
streamlined and automated through
Oracle WebCenter Suite.
Based on an open standards–based
architecture, Oracle WebCenter Suite
provides developers with a fast, low-risk
way to develop and deploy Web 2.0
services across the enterprise, including
wikis, mashups, instant messaging, Voice
over IP, Really Simple Syndication feeds,
discussion forums, and Web content
publishing into structured applications.
Enterprises can use Oracle WebCenter
Suite’s capabilities to embed and syn-
chronize task-oriented and information-
oriented portlets and Web 2.0 services

P R O D U C T SPOTLIGHT
ORACLE E-BUSINESS SUITE RELEASE 12 THINKS GLOBALLY
racle E-Business Suite Release 12, scheduled for availability in 2007, is
O being designed to help businesses gain a competitive edge in the global
economy. This major release is intended to allow organizations to think
globally to make better decisions, work globally to be more competitive, and
manage globally to lower costs and increase performance.
“Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 is expected to help companies
meet global market needs,” says Fred Studer, group vice president of
applications and technologies at Oracle. “Oracle E-Business Suite Release
12 should ensure companies that comprehensive requirements driving their
global business are absolutely addressed with better technology and better
applications—both coming together to drive value for our customers.”
Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12 is planned to include key
enhancements to help organizations make decisions based on complete
information from systems that span regions and divisions. For example, as
part of the release, Oracle Profitability Manager is expected to give users
expanded capabilities to perform profitability analysis and reporting not only
for individual product lines, but also for individual customers. Oracle Strategic
Network Optimization is intended to allow users to continuously evaluate the
cost and revenue implications of any decision affecting their global supply
chain. Oracle Project Portfolio Analysis should enable users to choose, fund,
and prioritize global projects based on what-if scenario analysis.
For customers facing the complexities of running an organization with
multiple divisions across different global regions, Oracle E-Business Suite
Release 12 is planned to include capabilities that make it simpler and
cheaper to implement, manage, and scale applications. To ease compliance
management, the release is expected to provide a repository for reviewing
and auditing accounting business rules in a single environment. The release
is also planned to leverage best practices from existing and acquired
products to deliver an easy-to-use user experience.
The release is intended to simplify global application management
through preinstrumented management functionality in Oracle Enterprise
Manager 10g for Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12. It is planned to include
extensive integration capabilities, such as advanced support for integrating
Oracle Applications with third-party applications and a Web services
repository that catalogs hundreds of services in Oracle E-Business Suite.
The release is also planned to include thousands of cross-industry
capabilities spanning enterprise resource planning, supply chain
management, and customer relationship management (CRM). For example,
for the communications industry, Oracle Order Management is expected
to support CRM by including the reconfiguration, upgrade, downgrade,
and disconnection of services. Oracle Asset Tracking is intended to enable
service providers to manage the financial and operational lifecycle of their
network infrastructure.
For the high-tech and manufacturing industries, the release is intended
to support compliance requirements in Japan and China through Oracle
Financial Management support for charge-based Shikyu and Golden Tax.

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 15

JF07_BRIEFS.indd 15 11/17/06 11:41:26 AM

 BRIEFS
to create composite applications.
Oracle WebCenter Suite is available
as an option for Oracle Application
Server Enterprise Edition, at
US$50,000 per CPU. The first release
includes Oracle WebCenter Framework,
a JavaServer Faces (JSF) and Oracle
Application Development Framework–
based framework for embedding
Asynchronous JavaScript And XML
(Ajax) components, portlets, and
content into JSF applications; Oracle
WebCenter Services; embeddable Web
2.0 content, collaboration, and com-
munication components; and Oracle
WebCenter Studio, which exposes the
Oracle WebCenter Framework and
Oracle WebCenter Services to program-
mers inside Oracle JDeveloper. This
release also includes Session Initiation
Protocol–based instant messaging,
online presence, threaded discus-
sion and wiki services, Oracle Secure
Enterprise Search, and a limited use
license of Oracle Content Database.
ORACLE DATABASE 11g BETA PROGRAM
ANNOUNCED
O racle has announced that the Oracle
Database 11g Beta Program is under-
way. Customers and partners interested in
participating in the beta program should
contact their account manager or alli-
ance manager or visit the Oracle Server
Technologies Beta Programs Web site.
“Oracle Database 11g will help organi-
zations deal with one of the greatest chal-
lenges in IT: change,” says Willie Hardie,
vice president of database product mar-
keting at Oracle. “The new release will
help lower the risk and cost of imple-
menting new software, application, and
other system changes and updates.”
Oracle Database 11g is planned to
include key change assurance features,
such as a facility to easily capture actual
production workloads at the database
level and replay test systems to fully
analyze the impact of system changes
including critical concurrency charac-
teristics. Another planned new feature,
SQL Replay, identifies SQL execution
plan changes and performance regres-
sions. Other planned enhancements
include rolling online application
16 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
JF07_BRIEFS.indd 16
upgrades and “hot” patching; auto-
mated capture of fault diagnostics for
faster fault resolution; and repair advis-
ers to guide DBAs through the fault
diagnosis and resolution process.
ORACLE BERKELEY DB RELEASE 4.5
DELIVERS KEY ENHANCEMENTS
O racle Berkeley DB Release 4.5, the
newest release of Oracle’s open
source, embeddable database, includes
new capabilities for improved perfor-
mance, availability, and ease of use. The
new release supports multiversion con-
currency control, nonstop upgrades for
replicated environments, and a prebuilt
replication framework to simplify devel-
opment of highly available applications.
“Oracle Berkeley DB Release 4.5
is quickly becoming the database of
choice for open source and commercial
developers who need to embed a fast,
reliable, transactional storage engine
within their high-performance applica-
tions,” says Rex Wang, vice president of
embedded systems marketing at Oracle.
Oracle Berkeley DB is part of Oracle’s
strategy to provide developers with a
broad range of embeddable products to
meet the diverse needs of independent
software vendors and original equip-
ment manufacturers, who integrate
Oracle technology directly into software
applications, devices, and equipment.
“This version adds compelling new
features and helps developers build and
deploy applications requiring fast, reli-
able storage without human administra-
tion,” adds Wang.
Oracle Berkeley DB Release 4.5 is
generally available under a dual license.
A no-cost open source license permits
redistribution if the application using
Oracle Berkeley DB is open source. A
commercial license is available for redis-
tribution of proprietary applications.
ORACLE ENTERPRISE MANAGER 10g
INTEGRATES APPLICATION MANAGEMENT
O racle has broadened the capabilities
of Oracle Enterprise Manger 10g to
deliver management functionality for
Oracle Applications and third-party
applications. Oracle Enterprise Manager
10g will enhance the management and
monitoring of Oracle E-Business Suite,
Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise, and
Oracle’s Siebel environments and provide
management capabilities for customer
applications running on Oracle and non-
Oracle databases and middleware.
Oracle will deliver advanced appli-
cation management, monitoring, and
service-level capabilities through three
new Oracle Application Management
Packs for Oracle E-Business Suite,
PeopleSoft Enterprise, and Siebel. The
Oracle Application Management Pack
for PeopleSoft Enterprise is now avail-
able; the remaining packs are planned
for availability in 2007.
With new capabilities for application
management, Oracle Enterprise Manager
10g delivers comprehensive management
functionality from the operating system
through the application layer—regard-
less of the underlying infrastructure—all
the way to the end user.
“Oracle Applications and third-
party application customers will have
a single solution at their disposal to
manage their applications and under-
lying systems comprehensively,” says
Jay Rossiter, vice president of system
management products at Oracle. “With
a consolidated view of their entire
environment, customers will be better
able to identify and resolve applica-
tion availability and performance issues
quickly and accurately, resulting in
improved service quality.”
ORACLE BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SUITE
ENABLES PERVASIVE INTELLIGENCE
T he next version of Oracle’s open
standards–based business intel-
ligence (BI) suite, Oracle Business
Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition 10g
Release 3, is planned to allow organiza-
tions to distill intelligence from existing
applications and data sources and dis-
tribute it pervasively across the enter-
prise. This pervasive intelligence will
serve to optimize business processes,
decisions, and actions.
Scheduled for general availability
in the next calendar year, this release
is planned to include strategic inte-
gration with Oracle Applications,
Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle
11/17/06 11:41:27 AM
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 BRIEFS
Database to provide a comprehensive
BI solution, as well as expanded hot-
pluggable support for third-party data
sources and systems.
“The compelling benefits of the new
release will further obviate the need
for organizations to wire together tools
from multiple point product BI vendors
in order to have complete, integrated,
best-of-breed solutions, regardless of
whether they have Oracle, non-Oracle,
or mixed environments,” says Thomas
Kurian, senior vice president, Oracle
Fusion Middleware.
Oracle Business Intelligence Suite
Enterprise Edition 10g Release 3 is
intended to leverage service-oriented
architecture techniques and integration
with Oracle BPEL Process Manager to
support multiple models of analytics-
driven workflow. This is planned to
include invocation of a Business Process
Execution Language (BPEL) process
from the BI environment; BI that directs
a BPEL process with intelligent deci-
sion points and conditional process
steps based on analytics; and BPEL
processes invoking analytic workflows
through Web services. The suite is also
planned to support seamless integration
with Oracle Portal and Oracle Online
Analytical Processing (OLAP).
The next release is also planned
to allow users to access information
through interactive dashboards, reports,
ad hoc analysis, real-time alerts, mobile
disconnected analytics, and integration
with Microsoft Office. The release plan
also includes support for Really Simple
Syndication capabilities.
ORACLE DEVELOPER DEPOT SIMPLIFIES
JAVA DEVELOPMENT
O racle has announced the release
of Oracle Developer Depot, a free,
downloadable developer productivity
tool that simplifies the way Java devel-
opers find, configure, and provision Java
applications for learning or prototyping
purposes. An integrated component
of Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle
Developer Depot complements Oracle’s
end-to-end Java platform by facilitating
development of Java and service-
oriented-architecture–based applications.
18 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
JF07_BRIEFS.indd 18
As software shifts away from single,
monolithic applications to assemblies
of easily configurable services, develop-
ers are changing the way they work. To
speed the development process, pro-
grammers often develop new applica-
tions by reusing existing or sample code
as a starting point. However, obtaining,
configuring, and deploying code can
take a long time and be error-prone.
Oracle Developer Depot, which runs on
Oracle Application Server 10g, elimi-
nates the complexity of the discover-to-
deploy process by providing a library of
reusable sample application code that
can be downloaded and deployed with
a single click. As a result, programmers
without Java experience can have an
application up and running rapidly, and
more-experienced developers can get a
head start on complex projects to meet
business requirements quickly.
Oracle Developer Depot leverages
popular Web 2.0 technologies such
as Asynchronous JavaScript And XML
(Ajax), the Spring 2.0 Framework, and
Really Simple Syndication to facilitate
code reuse and simplify development.
ORACLE MAKES STRATEGIC ACQUISITIONS
O racle has acquired SPL WorldGroup
and Sunopsis and agreed to acquire
MetaSolv Software and Stellent.
SPL is a leading provider of revenue
and operations management software for
the utilities industry and tax manage-
ment software for government organiza-
tions. SPL delivers best-in-class solutions
for customer care and billing, mobile
workforce management, outage and dis-
tribution management, and asset man-
agement that are specifically designed
for electric, gas, and water utilities.
Sunopsis is a leading provider
of heterogeneous data integration
products. Oracle plans to incorpo-
rate Sunopsis’ high-performance data
integration technology into the Oracle
Fusion Middleware product family and
make the technology an integrated part
of its service-oriented architecture,
business intelligence, and master data
management solutions.
MetaSolv is a leading provider of
service-fulfillment operations support
system (OSS) solutions for the com-
munications and media industry. The
company offers communications service
providers a comprehensive product set
for OSS service fulfillment, including
provisioning, network inventory, and
activation. MetaSolv’s standards-based
solutions support all types of services,
including next-generation Voice over
IP, Internet Protocol Television, and IP
virtual private network.
Stellent is a global provider of enter-
prise content management software
solutions. With Stellent’s Universal
Content Management solution, cus-
tomers can easily deploy multiple
line-of-business applications—such as
public Web sites, secure intranets and
extranets, and compliance processes—
and also scale the technology to support
multisite management and enterprise-
wide content management needs.
Oracle’s acquisition of Stellent will
complement and extend Oracle’s exist-
ing content management solution
portfolio. Stellent’s Universal Content
Management works with Oracle
Content Database and offers a variety
of best-of-breed solutions for document
management, Web content manage-
ment, information rights management,
digital asset management, records and
retention management, and imaging,
governance, risk, and compliance. O
Oracle WebCenter Suite
oracle.com/products/middleware/
webcenter.html
Oracle E-Business Suite
oracle.com/applications/e-business-suite.html
Oracle Server Technologies
Beta Programs
otnbeta.oracle.com/bpo/prospects/index.htm
Oracle Berkeley DB Release 4.5
oracle.com/technology/products/berkeley-db
Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g
oracle.com/enterprise_manager
Oracle Business Intelligence Suite
10g Release 3 Enterprise Edition
oracle.com/bi
Oracle Developer Depot
oracle.com/technology/tech/java/oc4j/odd
Oracle strategic acquisitions
oracle.com/corporate/acquisition.html
11/17/06 11:41:28 AM
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 a t O r a c l e ORACLE NEWS
Enterprise-Class Linux Support
Oracle Unbreakable Linux delivers the same support for Linux as for Oracle Database.
o meet customer demand for
enterprise-quality Linux support
and significantly reduced IT infra-
structure costs, Oracle is offering
Linux operating system support. The
support program, Oracle Unbreakable
Linux, provides enterprises with
industry-leading, global support for
Linux—the same level of support that
Oracle provides for the database.
“Oracle’s support program is all about
broadening the success of Linux and
helping customers deploy Linux seam-
lessly,” says Edward Screven, Oracle’s
chief corporate architect. “In the same
way we support the database, this new
support program provides bug fixes
to future, current, and past releases of
Linux. We provide the same level of
enterprise support for Linux as is avail-
able for other operating systems.”
Oracle offers enterprise-class Linux
support for substantially less than the
price Red Hat currently charges for its
best support. The program is available to
all Linux users for as little as US$99 per
system per year, and until January 31,
2007, Oracle customers can get a free
trial, and anyone can purchase support
at a 50 percent discount.
INDUSTRY ENDORSEMENT
Screven asserts that true enterprise-
quality support for Linux at a lower cost
is something that customers demand,
and many customers and partners have
already endorsed Oracle’s new Linux
support program.
“We believe that better support and
lower support prices will speed the
adoption of Linux, and we are working
closely with our partners to make that
happen,” says Screven. “Intel is a devel-
opment partner. Dell and HP are support
BOB ADLER
partners. Many others are signed up to
help us move Linux up to mission-
JF07_News.indd 21
Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect
critical status in the data center.”
Other partners endorsing the program
include IBM, Accenture, BearingPoint,
EMC, BMC, NetApp, Mercury, Kronos,
Sterling, Ingram Micro, and Tech Data.
Customer endorsements include Acuity
Brands Lighting, Alcoa North America,
Autodesk, Betfair, Cox Enterprises, IHOP,
McKesson, and Southern Company.
“As a customer with firsthand expe-
rience of Oracle’s outstanding support
organization, Dell will use Oracle to
support Linux operating systems inter-
nally,” says Michael Dell, chairman of
the board, Dell. “Oracle’s new Linux
support program will help us drive
standards deeper into the enterprise.
Dell customers can choose Oracle’s
Unbreakable Linux program to support
Linux environments running on Dell
PowerEdge servers.”
This widespread industry endorse-
ment is backed by Oracle’s enterprise-
class technical expertise, advanced
support technologies, and a global reach
including 7,000 support staff in 17
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY R IC H SCHWERI N
global support centers, providing help
to customers in 27 languages, in every
time zone. And the industry agrees.
Oracle was awarded the J.D. Power and
Associates Global Technology Service
and Support Certification for provid-
ing “an Outstanding Customer Service
Experience” to North American custom-
ers across all product lines.
LEADING THE LINUX STANDARD
“We think it’s important not to fragment
the market, so we will maintain compat-
ibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux,”
explains Screven. “Every time Red Hat
distributes a new version, we will resyn-
chronize with their code. We will add
bug fixes, which will be immediately
available to Red Hat and the rest of the
community. We have years of Linux
engineering experience and an excellent
technical team solely dedicated to Linux.
Oracle has a long history of contributing
to the community, such as Oracle Cluster
File System that is now part of Linux
kernel 2.6.16, and several Oracle employ-
ees are Linux mainline maintainers.”
Furthering this commitment, Oracle
has joined the Free Standards Group,
a nonprofit organization dedicated to
strengthening and promoting Linux as a
platform for application development.
“Oracle will continue contributing
Linux-related innovations, modifica-
tions, documentation, and fixes directly
to the Linux community on a timely
basis,” concludes Screven. O
LEARN more about the Oracle
Unbreakable Linux support program
oracle.com/linux
GET a free trial (Oracle customers only)
and receive 50 percent off purchase
price through January 31, 2007
oracle.com/events/linux/promotion.html
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 21
11/17/06 11:53:21 AM
SQL_Italy.3.5 ad 11/14/06 11:46 AM Page 1

Take control of your database

applications with SQL Detective 3.5 NEW

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R LD BUD
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They forged a perfect
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of Italy and I hear that
another market is already
under contract. Details
will follow soon!

SQLDetective: Mr Guidetti, you are the president of Confor Informatica,
one of the largest certified Oracle partners in Italy. Confor is now the
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Confor: As the oldest Italian consulting company, focused on Oracle
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our customers the best solutions available. SQLDetective amazes us.
It is a superior product at an affordable price.
SQLDetective: This represents the business and strategic side of Confor's
decision. What aspects of SQLDetective satisfied the expectations of your
technical experts?
Confor: We marketed SQL Navigator* and Toad* prior to their acqui-
sition by Quest Software* and up to the end of 2004. In 20 years of
experience, we have not found a product like SQLDetective. Our experts
are enthusiastic about its modularity and stability. It satisfies the need
for an easy2use development tool as well as the in-depth analysis of
our DBA’s.
SQLDetective: What are SQLDetective’s key benefits for your clients?
Confor: The advantages for the Italian market are: easy2use user
interface; broad range of tools and features; strong stability; unique
innovations; accurate technical support and leading price performance.
SQLDetective: Why should Italian PL/SQL developers buy SQLDetective
from Confor?
Confor: We provide first rate technical support, training classes, techni-
cal consultancy and all marketing and sales activities in the local
Italian language. We understand the needs of our Italian Oracle users!
SQLDetective: What are Confor's goals with SQLDetective?
Confor: We know the Italian Market for PL/SQL developers extremely
well. With SQLDetective, we expect to regain the number one position
in the Italian market within 3-4 years for this type of solution.
About Confor - www.confor.it
Confor is a consulting and information technology company specializing
in the automotive, leasing, petroleum, and telecom markets. The services
includes software products, database & application management, system
integration, management consulting and training. Solutions availabe for
ERP and CRM systems, as well as for BI and HR projects. Confor has
formed partnerships with leading international IT vendors and has
partnered with Oracle for 20 years.
Luca Guidetti, President of the Board, Confor Informatica S.p.A., Italy
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* Quest Software, SQL Navigator and Toad are a registered trademarks of Quest Software, Inc.
 c h a n n e l s COMMITMENT BY A A RO N L A Z E N BY

Protecting Nature and Information

The Nature Conservancy protects endangered species and drinking water.
eginning in the Catskill Mountains, the Neversink River over the next two years. Specifically, the grant enables the
winds its way for 60 miles to the confluence of the New Nature Conservancy to develop a new, expanded version of
York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania borders. Aside from ConserveOnline. Oracle is also making a US$200,000 in-kind
featuring some of the best fly-fishing in the country, software donation that will enable the Nature Conservancy to
this Delaware River tributary is home to the world’s healthi- expand its geographic information system, which allows con-
est population of the globally imperiled dwarf wedge mussel, servationists to visualize, query, and layer spatial information
and the mussels’ endangered status has prompted a large-scale on a single screen. These tools allow the Nature Conservancy to
conservation effort called the Neversink River Project. The better manage the growing amount of scientific data.
project—operated by the Nature Conservancy—keeps the “As a decentralized, science-based organization that is
mussels bubbling, the ecosys- rapidly expanding, the Nature
tem healthy, and New York Conservancy is increasingly
City’s purest source of drinking dependent on quality and speed
water potable. of knowledge sharing, both
Since its founding in 1951, within the Conservancy and
the Nature Conservancy has with our partners,” says Steve
grown to be a leading conser- McCormick, president and CEO
vation organization working of the Nature Conservancy.
around the world to protect “Thanks to Oracle’s grant, orga-
ecologically important lands nizations will have ready access
and waters. The organization to compelling information to
and its one million members help direct—and inspire—con-
together have saved more servation action on a regional,
than 117 million acres and national, and global scale.”
5,000 river miles around the Oracle’s partnership with
world. By 2015, the Nature the Nature Conservancy is
Conservancy hopes to achieve an important part of Oracle’s
an ambitious goal to preserve Commitment, the company’s
places that represent at least 10 efforts to advance education,
percent of every major habitat The Neversink River, home to the endangered dwarf wedge mussel, is also New promote diversity, enrich the
York City’s purest source of drinking water.
type on Earth. life of communities, and protect
But massive projects such as the Neversink River Project the environment. Oracle has been a longtime supporter of the
require innovative tools to keep information current, organized, Nature Conservancy; over the past 17 years, Oracle has made
and available to the conservation community. It’s for this reason corporate contributions and in-kind donations totaling more
that the Nature Conservancy developed ConserveOnline, a free, than US$3.4 million.
internet-based resource tool designed to enhance the efficiency “We’re proud of the nearly two-decade relationship we’ve
and effectiveness of global conservation by allowing conserva- fostered with the Nature Conservancy,” says Rosalie Gann,
tionists to post data, form work groups, and search the data- Oracle’s director of Global Corporate Citizenship. “We’re
bases of organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, the excited to help the organization improve its technology—and
Rainforest Alliance, and the Nature Conservancy itself. improve conservation communication throughout the world.” O
“We deal with a lot of information and a lot of complexity,”
says the Nature Conservancy’s George Schuler, conservation Aaron Lazenby is a senior editor with Oracle Publishing.
scientist and director of the project. “Complexity in terms of
having researchers out in the river, and dealing with people
from all over our region and all over the world.”
Oracle’s Commitment
To help in these efforts, in 2006 Oracle awarded the oracle.com/commitment
Nature Conservancy a US$1 million Commitment Grant

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 23

JF07_Commitment.indd 23 11/17/06 11:47:17 AM


b o o k BEAT
Querying XML:
XQuery, XPath,
and SQL/XML
in Context
By Jim Melton and
Stephen Buxton
Morgan Kaufmann
www.elsevier.com
ISBN: 1-55-860711-0
XML has become the lingua franca for
representing business data, exchanging
information between business partners and
applications, and adding structure—and
sometimes meaning—to text-based
documents. In the area of search, XML offers
some challenges and opportunities: querying
XML can produce precise, fine-grained
results—if you know how to express and
execute those queries.
Querying XML provides a comprehensive
background on XML, from fundamental
concepts (what is XML?), data models (infoset,
post-schema-validation infoset, XQuery), to
APIs (querying XML from SQL or Java), and
more. The book provides software developers
and system architects with the most-useful
approaches to querying XML documents and
repositories. It also offers managers and
project leaders a way to grasp how querying
XML fits into the larger context of querying
and XML.
Oracle Database 10g
Real Application
Clusters Handbook
By K Gopalakrishnan
Oracle Press
oraclepress.com
ISBN: 0-07-146509-X
If you need a comprehensive guide to Oracle
Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC), this
is the book for you. Oracle Database 10g
Real Application Clusters Handbook covers
the full spectrum of Oracle RAC topics.
Rather than providing a lot of commands
and syntaxes that are readily available in the
standard documentation and other Oracle
texts, the book offers a solid background on
Oracle RAC as well as its fundamentals.
Author K Gopalakrishnan, a consultant with
Oracle, provides tuning and troubleshooting
tips and offers insight on the most advanced
diagnostics available. He provides a complete
conceptual overview of various Oracle RAC
building blocks as well as deeper discussions
on their inner workings.
“The goal of this book is to explain
implementing and using Oracle RAC in the
most efficient manner,” says Gopalakrishnan.
Browse for Oracle books at oracle.com/
technology/books/10g_books.html.
24 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
JF07_Partner.indd 24
c h a n n e l s PARTNER NEWS
GRIDAPP SYSTEMS OFFERS FREE ORACLE
REAL APPLICATION CLUSTERS LICENSES
G ridApp Systems’ “Ready. Set. RAC!”
promotion bundles GridApp’s D2500
database appliance with free Oracle
Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC)
licenses. GridApp’s reference architec-
ture for Oracle RAC allows companies
to avoid possible unforeseen costs of
installing and managing an Oracle RAC
environment. The “Ready. Set. RAC!”
offering also includes optional storage
and migration services.
GridApp’s D2500 appliance combines
IBM BladeCenter servers with Clarity,
GridApp’s database automation software,
to simplify, automate, and virtualize
the database environment. Because of
the simplification and automation it
provides, the D2500 can be put into
production within one day and can scale
databases in minutes, says GridApp
Chief Scientist Matt Zito.
IBM BOOSTS ORACLE ON SYSTEM Z
AND LINUX
I BM and Oracle are collaborating on
sales and marketing of enterprise
business solutions featuring Oracle
Applications (Oracle E-Business
Suite and Oracle’s Siebel and Oracle’s
PeopleSoft products) and technology
for Linux on IBM System z mainframe
servers. The Oracle/IBM Joint Solution
Center in Montpelier, France, and the
IBM Oracle International Competency
Center in California’s Silicon Valley will
develop best practices, implementation
guidance, and support procedures for
the new comprehensive solutions.
The solutions will be available on
the IBM System z9 Enterprise Class and
IBM System z9 Business Class servers.
Customer incentives up to US$250,000
are planned. “Today, we offer a compre-
hensive set of enterprise infrastructure
and solutions that build upon and
modernize customer investments in
System z, including Oracle E-Business
Suite, Siebel Customer Relationship
Management, and PeopleSoft Enterprise
using Oracle Database 10g Release 2
on Linux on System z,” says Robert
Shimp, vice president of Oracle’s Global
Technology business unit.
EMC LAUNCHES NEW ORACLE SOLUTIONS
AND SUPPORT
E MC has expanded its specialized
storage solutions and services port-
folio for Oracle customers in midsize
and enterprise organizations and has
announced new investments to support
Oracle Grid technology.
For midsize enterprises, EMC has
developed integrated solutions for
Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Real
Application Clusters based on the EMC
Celerra IP storage systems. EMC and
Oracle have performed system-level
testing and validation of these storage
systems in Oracle environments, and
can provide documented best practices,
reference architectures, and real-world
validations to partners and customers.
For enterprise environments, EMC
has developed an assessment service for
Oracle Database 10g Readiness, and a
Health Check service for infrastructures
supporting Oracle E-Business Suite.
The assessment service uses EMC tools
and information lifecycle management
methodology to assess a customer’s
environment and make recommenda-
tions about data layout, backup and
recovery, availability, and infrastructure
for migrating to Oracle Database 10g.
The Health Check service evaluates the
storage infrastructure up through the
Oracle application layer to ensure that
customers’ Oracle solutions are running
on appropriate infrastructure, and
makes recommendations for optimizing
those environments.
EMC is also investing US$20 million
to help Oracle customers use its refer-
ence architectures, the two companies’
joint services, and EMC/Oracle proof-of-
concept facilities.
ADOBE BUILDS FLEX INTO ORACLE PORTALS
O
racle and Adobe are collaborat-
ing to allow developers to include
animations, charts, and graphs created
11/17/06 3:37:33 PM
 Partner Spotlight SMB Partner Momentum Builds

A s the number of Oracle partners serving the small and

medium business (SMB) market continues to grow,
Oracle is offering several programs to support partners.
“Oracle has long been a trusted partner for small and
medium businesses, and we have developed a wealth
of knowledge to help facilitate the unique needs of that
market,” says Oracle President Charles Phillips.
Oracle Accelerate is a new program targeting partners
who want to sell Oracle Applications into the SMB market.
Prepackaged, industry-specific application bundles are one
key to Oracle Accelerate. Working with its partners, Oracle
has identified 80 product bundles that can help SMBs
quickly employ Oracle’s enterprise applications without
sacrificing the applications’ flexibility or functionality. The
bundles deliver comprehensive business flows (front-office,
back-office, and industry-specific processes) and can be
extended by Oracle partners.
Oracle Business Accelerators—already an established
part of Oracle’s enterprise business—comprise the second
key component of Oracle Accelerate. These automated setup
tools create end-to-end business flows based on a series of
simple but specific questions about the business, and auto-
matically apply that information to the Oracle application
implementation. Once a setup questionnaire is complete, a
new application can be up and running within hours.
Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) is the third key element
in Oracle Accelerate. Oracle has expanded SMB-specific
content on the OPN portal, making available customer pre-
sentations, product positioning documents, sales kits, and
specialized training materials used by Oracle’s own direct
sales team. Oracle also plans to open regional SMB Solution
Centers throughout the world to showcase Oracle Accelerate
and to bring partners into the sales cycle.
To support Oracle Accelerate, Oracle has established
an SMB Applications business unit, headed by Senior Vice
President Tony Kender. The business unit will maintain
the partner/reseller ecosystem, drive the development and
refinement of product and industry-specific bundles, and
generally work to ensure SMB customer success. Oracle cur-
rently has more than 19,000 applications customers world-
wide that are SMBs.
“Our goal is simple: to become the No. 1 provider of
applications to small and medium businesses,” Kender says.
“With Oracle Accelerate we are aligning Oracle’s proven
applications and rapid implementation tools with our part-
ners’ industry solutions under a single package. We have
doubled our SMB marketing program budget and added a
dozen new SMB-focused executives around the world.”
In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), partner
momentum around the SMB market is also on the rise.
Since June 2006, more than 350 partners in EMEA have
signed up for Oracle QuickStart Plus, an entry-level offer-
ing for new Oracle value-added resellers and independent
software vendors wanting to sell Oracle Database and Oracle
Application Server Standard Edition One and Standard
Edition to SMBs. “[Oracle] QuickStart Plus provides support
that allows partners to quickly take advantage of Oracle
products and offer industry-leading solutions to a very
buoyant SMB market,” says Penny Philpot, senior director,
Oracle Alliances and Channels.

in Adobe Flex (Adobe’s Flash-based
application creation framework) with
other Asynchronous JavaScript And
XML (Ajax) content in enterprise portals
created by Oracle Portal. This allows
applications with highly visual displays
to be integrated with enterprise processes
and data, creating enterprise mashups
that have the impact and effectiveness of
Web 2.0 applications but that also pre-
serve the standards-based infrastructure.
The integration works with the
current generation of Oracle Portal, and
will be incorporated into future Oracle
user-interaction environments. Oracle
and Adobe intend to work with the
Java Standardization Request (JSR) 168,
JSR 268, and Web Services for Remote
Portlets (WSRP) 2.0 standards groups on
the integration.
ITEMFIELD CONTENTMASTER NOW
INTEGRATED WITH WAREHOUSE BUILDER
I temfield has integrated its
ContentMaster universal data transfor-
mation software with Oracle Warehouse
Builder 10g Release 2. The combined
offering uses ContentMaster’s data trans-
formation capabilities to allow Oracle
Warehouse Builder 10g to handle any
type of data, including unstructured
documents such as Microsoft Word and
Excel documents and Adobe Portable
Document Format files, and semistruc-
tured data such as electronic data inter-
change, Health Level 7, and complex
COBOL copybooks.
By using Itemfield’s software, Oracle
customers can integrate unstructured
and semistructured data for extract,
transform, and load; data quality and
auditing; integrated relational and
dimensional modeling; and lifecycle
management of data and metadata.
GENPACT AND TURNKEY AUTOMATE ORACLE
E-BUSINESS SUITE TESTING
G enpact and TurnKey Solutions,
two members of the Oracle
PartnerNetwork, have formed a global
alliance to provide testing automation
for Oracle E-Business Suite customers.
Genpact will implement TurnKey’s
testing scripts against a wide range

oracle magazine  JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007  25

 PARTNER NEWS
of Oracle modules, including Oracle
Financials, Oracle Human Resources
Management, Oracle Manufacturing,
Oracle Order Management, and Oracle
Projects. This will automate functional
and regression testing efforts to improve
patching, upgrade, and go-live Oracle
E-Business Suite 11i rollouts.
One result, according to TurnKey
CEO Bruce R. Guebner, will be more-
effective conference room pilots. “As
a result of deploying these automated
technologies, we’ve seen a significant
drop off in the number of functional
business users and technical engineers
required to meet ever-more demanding
testing lifecycle deadlines,” Guebner
says. “With this automation deployed,
customers no longer have to wait for the
application to be ready prior to testing.”
NAVTEQ MAP DATA NOW BUNDLED WITH
ORACLE APPLICATIONS
O
racle and NAVTEQ, a global pro-
vider of digital maps for vehicle
navigation and location-based solutions,
have reached a multiyear worldwide
agreement to incorporate NAVTEQ
boundary mapping data into Oracle
Database 10g and other Oracle products,
effectively coupling geospatial informa-
tion with enterprise data from supply
chain, customer relationship manage-
ment, and planning and risk-assessment
applications. The NAVTEQ-Oracle com-
bination will make it easier for custom-
ers to employ Oracle Spatial 10g, Oracle
Locator, Oracle Application Server 10g
MapViewer, and future Oracle products
that will use geographic data.
NAVTEQ’s mapping data includes
administrative boundaries for coun-
tries, states, and cities, as well as major
highways and roads. The company also
plans to offer additional map and demo-
graphic products, such as street net-
works, ZIP codes, and industry-specific
data sets, to Oracle customers.
26  JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007  oracle.com/oraclemagazine
APPSECINC’S APPRADAR NOW AVAILABLE
FOR ORACLE ON LINUX
A
pplication Security, Inc., (AppSecInc) GridApp Systems
www.gridapp.com
has announced Oracle on Linux
IBM System z
support in AppRadar, part of its appli- www.ibm.com/systems/z
cation security solution. AppRadar EMC Solutions for Oracle
uses real-time monitoring and security www.emc.com
auditing to defend against application Adobe Flex
vulnerabilities while ensuring adherence www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex2_
portal.html
to regulatory requirements. AppRadar
protects databases against internal and Oracle Partners for SMBs
oracle.com/solutions/mid/accelerate-
external attacks without degrading data- partners.html
base performance, and supports both Application Modernization Initiative
host- and network-based deployment. www.hp.com/go/ami
AppSecInc’s decision to support Intel
www.intel.com
Oracle on Linux was driven by cus-
tomer demand. AppRadar is part of Itemfield’s ContentMaster Universal
AppSecInc’s database security suite, Data Transformation Software
www.itemfield.com
which also includes AppDetective for
Genpact and TurnKey automation
database vulnerability assessment scan- solutions
ning, DbEncrypt for column-level data- www.genpact.com
www.turnkeysolutions.com
base encryption, and AppSecInc Console
for distributed management. NAVTEQ
www.navteq.com
SILVERSTORM RDS OVER INFINIBAND NOW AppSecInc’s AppRadar
www.appsecinc.com
ON ORACLE REAL APPLICATION CLUSTERS
SilverStorm RDS for Oracle
S ilverStorm Technologies, a provider
of high-performance interconnect
solutions for clustered computing, has
www.silverstorm.com/oracle
released the Reliable Datagram Sockets
(RDS) over InfiniBand interconnect for
Oracle Real Application Clusters 10g
(Oracle RAC). InfiniBand is a high-
performance, switched fabric intercon-
nect standard for servers.
RDS was codeveloped by SilverStorm
and Oracle. In beta testing, RDS over
InfiniBand provided up to 60 percent
performance improvement over Gigabit
Ethernet for interconnect-intensive
applications. SilverStorm’s high-
performance clustering solutions for
Oracle RAC are showcased in Oracle’s
Enterprise Technology Centers.
RDS has been validated through
Intel’s Enabled Server Acceleration
Alliance program and is available for
Oracle Database 10g Release 2 at no cost
and in SilverStorm’s QuickSilver 3.2 or
later host releases for Linux. ■
 c h a n n e l s PEER-TO-PEER BY B LA IR CAMPBELL

The Good Old Days

Three peers reflect on early adventures in database programming, analysis, and split-finger fastballs.
Steve Karam running our nightly batches. peerSPECS
How did you get started in IT? Which new features of Oracle Database Company: Communication
& Systèmes, a systems
My aunt gave me an 8086 10g are you finding most valuable? The integration company
computer when I was nine possibilities for composite partition- Job Title/Description:
Oracle DBA consultant and
years old, and the first thing ing, including range/list partitioning, Oracle’s PeopleSoft applications
I learned to do on it was open new doors for performance and administrator, currently providing
technical support to France
program in GW-BASIC. storage. These features, along with Telecom’s development and
Around age 10 was when I the new partition pruning capabili- production teams
really started programming, ties, are very useful in a large data- Location: Toulouse, France

and by age 16, I was writing a base like ours. I first did database Oracle Credentials: Oracle-
certified DBA (Oracle9i ), with more
program to hack into my school’s computer. A class- analysis using bstat/estat utilities, so than 8 years of experience using
mate who saw me writing that program in study hall told his I find the latest version of Statspack Oracle products

dad, who was an Oracle contractor for the Navy, about me, and greatly improves database analysis.
oracle.com/technology/community/
his dad ended up hiring me on as a junior Oracle DBA. Do you have a favorite vacation spot? oracle_ace
What would you like to see Oracle, as a company, do differently? I’d I love the Pyrenees—it’s a beautiful
peerSPECS like to see an increased focus on mountain range with a long and interesting history.
Company: Burleson Oracle Oracle Academy, Oracle’s education
Consulting and Training
Job Title/Description: Senior
program for high school students, Dave Moore
Oracle DBA and instructor, and the Oracle Academic Initiative, What advice do you have about getting into Web and database
responsible for training, mentoring, for students at the college and uni- development? Build a Web site for something you’re passion-
backup and recovery, performance
tuning, and implementation of versity level. It would be great for ate about. If it’s gardening, build and maintain a gardening
new systems Oracle to concentrate on getting Web site that you think would be useful to others. Then
Location: Virginia Beach, Virginia really intelligent up-and-coming enhance it over time—add a
Oracle Credentials: Oracle- technologists into the Oracle field. database back end or wiki. It
certified master (Oracle Database
10g ), with 10 years of experience Tell us about your upcoming book, will be very rewarding.
using Oracle products Easy Oracle Jumpstart ( Rampant What technology has most changed
TechPress, 2006). It’s a DBA your life? First, there’s Quicken,
oracle.com/technology/community/
oracle_ace primer—the basic concepts you which has actually made me
need to know. It’s a joint effort look forward to paying my
between me and another DBA, Robert Freeman. My second bills each month. Second is my
book, Oracle and Ajax, is due to the publisher next April. BlackBerry, which I depend on
much more than my laptop
Nicolas Gasparotto these days.
What’s your favorite tool or technique on the job? Statspack and How do you use the internet? I
session tracing—to find the most important queries and opti- use it mainly for research—like peerSPECS
Company: Database-Brothers, Inc.
mize their execution time by finding out the pitfalls of throw- (DBI), a firm specializing in database
rewriting them when possible, ing a split-finger fastball at performance and accountability
or by playing with indexes too early an age. These days, Job Title/Description:
Vice president, research and
and parameters. Implementing however, I find myself visiting development, responsible for all
table partitioning is a big fewer and fewer sites. I use CNN R&D tasks for database security
and performance products
challenge: One table in .com as my morning newspaper
Location: Austin,Texas
our database is more than but really only frequent about Length of Time Using Oracle
150GB, without accounting four other Web sites: asktom Products: 15 years
for the indexes, and finding .oracle.com; oracleutilities.com;
the best partition settings oracle.com/technology; and, of oracle.com/technology/community/
oracle_ace
for this table is crucial for course, www.quicken.com. O

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 27

JF07_Peer.indd 27 11/17/06 11:59:31 AM

LLP3084 11/8/06 1:04 PM Page 1

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 c h a n n e l s CUTTING EDGE

Driving and Flying

Encrypted hard drives and planes that mimic birds

Perching Plane
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No. . . it’s a perching plane—a plane
that lands like a bird. From the early days of aircraft
design, engineers have looked to birds for inspi-
ration. Whereas most engineers focus on
how birds fly, Ephrahim Garcia at Cornell
University in Ithaca, New York, believes
Secure Hard Drives
birds have a lot to teach us about
In this fast-paced world, we’ve all got plenty to worry about,
landing. He is designing a pilotless
so losing a laptop with sensitive information on it is the last
aircraft that can land vertically by
thing you need—especially if you work for a large company
“perching” like a bird.
or government organization. Sure, there are passwords and
Currently the perching
other security applications that limit access to data, but there
plane is being developed to
are better ways to secure hard drive content.
address a problem with recon-
Seagate’s DriveTrust technology is a drive-level set of
naissance planes: They find something
security services that take advantage of the hard drive’s
interesting to look at but can’t inspect it
computing environment. Modern disk drives contain a
properly because they don’t have enough
full-fledged computing element, including processor, RAM,
fuel to keep flying over the area for any
a multitasking operating system, and dedicated private
length of time. “If you could land the plane
magnetic storage. Although host operating system envi-
on the edge of a nearby building, you could
ronments are designed to enable widespread application
continue surveillance of an area,” says Garcia.
support, hard drives are closed computing environments
Since runways are hard to come by on the tops
that run specialized code to manage drive functions. In
of buildings, the reconnaissance plane would have to land
short, the hard drive is an ideal place for securing informa-
vertically. Existing vertical landing craft, such as helicop-
tion because its internal operations are sealed off from other
ters or Harrier jump jets, are too heavy and require too
computing system resources.
much fuel to make them suitable for surveillance. Instead,
DriveTrust-enabled drives automatically encrypt and
Garcia believes, by mimicking the way birds come in to
decrypt all the data that travels in and out of the drive.
land, he can bring an aircraft to a gentle stop using aero-
Unlike other data encryption applications, DriveTrust
dynamics alone.
encryption keys are password-protected and never appear
When a bird wants to perch, it flares its wing feathers,
in any readable format on the drive. Encryption
angling them against the airflow; then it does the same with
combined with strong authentica-
its tail feathers as it lowers them. This configuration pro-
tion simplifies and secures
duces as much drag as possible, and slows the bird enough
hard drive disposal and
for a safe touchdown. When Garcia’s plane is preparing to
reuse. Data on an encrypted
land, the wings rotate upward to force the fuselage down,
drive is only accessible when
creating strong drag. The tail extends away from the body on
the encryption key is enabled
a long boom, which is articulated so the tail can droop down
through a valid password. If
to provide varying degrees of drag as it moves.
the encryption key is changed
or eliminated, all of the data is
SEAGATE, CORNELL UNIVERSITY

instantly rendered inaccessible.

Technicians can now safely
repurpose or dispose of the drive, Seagate DriveTrust
www.seagate.com
without compromising sensitive
Perching plane
information. Just don’t forget www.engr.cornell.edu
your password.

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 29

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 30 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

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 ALWAYS
AVAILABLE
BY A LA N JOC H

ORACLE HIGH-AVAILABILITY TECHNOLOGIES

DRIVE BUSINESS 24/7.

on’t be fooled by appearances—Red Nose Day is no

laughing matter. Comic Relief’s biennial fund-raiser
invites people throughout the United Kingdom to don
red noses as they get sponsored to do all sorts of
silly things and donate money to support antipoverty
programs locally and in Africa. The event culminates
with a five-hour telethon, during which comedians
such as John Cleese and Ricky Gervais might show
up to push for a final round of telephone or Web
donations. Donors apparently laugh all the way to
their wallets: A recent campaign netted more than
US$123.6 million.
But peek behind the scenes at those make-or-
break telethons and you’ll find a lot of serious IT
CORBIS

staff who could use a laugh themselves. Because so

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 31

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 much of the fund-raising success hinges on efficiently pro-
cessing more than 250,000 electronic transactions in a short
time frame, Comic Relief’s data center is fine-tuned for high
availability (HA). “If the system isn’t working, then obviously
we can’t collect contributions,” says Martin Gill, head of new
media for Comic Relief. “We can’t just go back to people
a couple of days later and say, “Remember when you were
feeling generous and you wanted to give us £100? Please try
again now, because we fixed the glitch that prevented you
doing it the other night.” Given the narrow window in which
the charitable organization needs to process pledges, any glitch
can cost the fund-raising effort—so systems need to be up,
available, and fast.
To avoid any awkward second acts, Comic Relief’s new-
media managers rely on a dual-data-center architecture built
with Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Real Application Clusters
(Oracle RAC), and Oracle Data Guard. Together these tech-
nologies ensure that the charitable fun doesn’t grind to a halt if
a hard drive, server, network switch, or entire site crashes.
This high-availability approach came in handy during
a recent Red Nose Day when processing times were rising
above targeted levels. The flexible high-availability environ-
ment enabled Comic Relief to switch all the transaction
processing to one data center while using the second one
“Clustering is what’s compelling about the Oracle technology,” says Hernan Alvarez,
for diagnostics, ultimately solving the problem with a quick Director of Engineering Operations for Farecast. “We looked at other alternatives, but
upgrade before rejoining the two centers. “We had no loss there really wasn’t any other choice.”
of service to our donors,” Gill says. “Only some sweaty
engineers who worked hard and brilliantly to successfully within an effective high-availability architecture keep data and
manage the situation.” systems protected against extended outages, while also con-
tributing processing power for day-to-day tasks when crises
EASIER CHOICES aren’t looming. “Many companies think their disaster recov-
High availability and disaster recovery (DR) have long been ery infrastructure is an investment that cannot provide other
like life insurance: IT managers know they need them, but operational benefits,” says Sushil Kumar, senior director of
their hard-to-quantify return on investment (ROI) poses a database product management at Oracle. “Oracle’s philosophy
challenge. Budget watchers struggle with how much is enough is for customers to derive the most out of their disaster recov-
to spend for server and storage resources that might remain ery infrastructure, even in times when there is no disaster.”
idle most of the time. “K” Line America, a global transportation company spe-
Now, new HA/DR strategies mean IT managers don’t cializing in ocean transport, found this high-availability
have to make that choice. The right technologies configured balance when it installed Oracle Database 10g and Oracle

STAYING SECURE WITH ORACLE DATA GUARD

Oracle Data Guard is a feature of Oracle
Database 10g that creates, synchronizes, and
monitors one or more standby databases to
protect data from failures, disasters, errors, and
corruptions. These standby databases can be
located at remote disaster recovery sites thou-
sands of miles away from the production data
center, or they may be located in the same city,
because of a planned or unplanned outage,
Oracle Data Guard can switch any standby
database to the production role, thus minimizing
the downtime associated with the outage and
preventing any data loss.
In keeping with the imperative to make
maximum use of standby database resources
even while in standby role, an Oracle Data Guard
main database. Operating system and hardware
maintenance can be done in rolling fashion: First
at the standby side, and then after a planned role
transition (referred to as a switchover) the standby
database assumes the production role and the
same maintenance can be executed on the
original primary with minimal downtime. Oracle’s
Sushil Kumar says, “People have assumed that
REX RYSTEDT

same campus, or even in the same building. If standby database can field queries and run certain tasks require downtime, but Oracle’s goal
the production database becomes unavailable backups to relieve processing demands on the is to eliminate planned maintenance downtime.”

32 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

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 “High availability is not something you
build on top of your existing applications.
It needs to be thinking that pervades your
entire IT infrastructure.”
—Mano Malayanur, Manager of Technical Operations and
Infrastructure Management and Infrastructure Architect,
Fannie Mae Guarantee Businesses Systems (GBS) group
RAC. Its dual server cluster protects “K” Line’s global trans-
portation management system with automatic failover should
either server node crash for any reason. “K” Line uses Oracle
RAC to automatically balance transaction processing between
its two servers. The result is a boost in processing capacity:
All resources are used all the time, and users are protected
from server failure.
“Oracle RAC really impressed us because it allows us to take
advantage of both servers,” says Knut LaVine, general manager
of application development at “K” Line America. “We saw a
dramatic improvement in the performance of the application
because we were able to utilize both servers at the same time.”
BUDGET RELIEF
The right high-availability architecture delivers other economic
advantages as well. Because Oracle software can provide the
highest level of availability on commodity hardware, such as
x86-based servers, high-availability designers aren’t forced
to buy expensive proprietary platforms, long thought to be
essential for reliability. This expensive philosophy dates back
to mainframe models and argues that the more you spend on
hardware, the fewer breakdowns you’ll experience.
Today, enterprises can achieve comparable reliability at a
fraction of the mainframe cost using Oracle’s high-availability
functionality and commodity-priced hardware. “We used to
spend a tremendous amount of money buying very expensive
proprietary UNIX systems,” says Hernan Alvarez, director of
engineering operations for Farecast, an online travel-booking
site based in Seattle, Washington. “With the advent of cluster-
ing software and open source operating systems, that para-
digm has shifted. Now it’s the software that’s really making
things happen.”
Farecast invested in Oracle RAC, which automatically trans-
fers and rebalances workload from a failed server to surviving
servers in a cluster. The ability to deploy a high-availability
solution on commodity hardware using Oracle RAC is a cor-
nerstone of Farecast’s strategy.
The travel site applies its proprietary algorithms to fare
data collected from airlines and third-party sources to predict
prices for customers shopping for the best deals. Customers
access the site from around the world, which means that any
downtime, whether for planned maintenance or resulting from
technical problems, would almost always affect some custom-
DAVID DEAL
ers during the business day.
To cope, Farecast uses 100 x86 servers with 64-bit proces-
JF07_HiAvail.indd 33
Mano Malayanur of Fannie Mae’s Guarantee Businesses Systems group calls Oracle
Data Guard “our preferred solution for disaster recovery.” The decision to go with
Oracle followed an extensive proof-of-concept pilot project.
sors and large amounts of RAM. These powerful servers came
at a relative bargain of only about US$5,000 each. The redun-
dancy available from these Oracle RAC–running econo-models
gives Alvarez confidence about his HA capabilities. “If we lose
a box, who cares—we’re not dependent on any one device in
our network,” Alvarez says.
Farecast’s predictive engine relies on an Oracle data ware-
house with more than 5TB of data for storing and analyzing
data for its airfare predictions. Before Oracle Database 10g and
Oracle RAC, Farecast relied on a MySQL database, a product
that Farecast just outgrew, according to Alvarez. “Clustering is
what’s compelling about the Oracle technology,” he says. “We
looked at other clustering and database alternatives, including
IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server. But we have a very large
database, so with partitioning, compression, and clustering on
top of that, there really wasn’t any other choice. SQL Server
just wasn’t going to get it done.”
Alvarez adds that Oracle RAC’s ability to configure multiple
low-cost commodity servers and create a highly available and
scalable grid that requires no change to application or database
structures keeps total costs under control. “I’d say our hardware
costs are one-tenth of what they were five years ago,” he says.
Which helps Farecast align its high-availability needs with
its business demands. “We could always roll out a $10 million
solution and get the HA job done, but does that meet our
business goals?” he asks. “We’re able to stay within budget and
get the performance and availability we’re looking for [with
Oracle], so it’s a huge business success.”
ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 33
11/20/06 3:49:02 PM
 LOW-COST REDUNDANCY
Oracle RAC can grow from an initial two nodes to as many as
100 nodes as power is needed. Because all servers in an Oracle
M A K I N G I T AVA I L A B L E
RAC cluster are active, application performance scales as addi-
tional servers are added to the cluster. In addition, the mul-
tiple servers in Oracle RAC all have access to all of the data.
Because of Cache Fusion, users can coordinate access so all Site Failure
Oracle Data Guard provides
servers can modify any of the data. This allows work requests UNPLANNED DOWNTIME the ability to set up
to run on any server, instead of being limited to a specific and maintain a standby
copy of your production
server because of some “partitioning” algorithm required of database.
shared-nothing environments. The combination of these attri-
butes makes it possible to build clusters of low-priced com-
PROTECTING
modity servers that can provide higher availability and better
FROM DATA
performance than much more costly and proprietary main- FAILURE
frame-based high-availability architectures.
The Oracle database shared by all servers in a cluster is
exposed to storage subsystem failures that can cause data
file corruptions on the primary database. Such failures are
infrequent, but when they occur they result in unaccept-
Corruption
able downtime for mission-critical applications. Oracle When data corruption
Data Guard isolates the standby database from such corrup- occurs, Oracle provides
a host of tools for
tion by continually validating all data before it is applied. backup and recovery,
Corruptions caused by the primary database storage sub- such as RMAN and
system, or corruptions introduced by the network during Oracle Secure Backup.

the course of transmitting data to the standby site, are never

applied to the standby database. This concept of isolating
the standby site from failures that occur on the production
database is one of the major benefits provided by Oracle
Data Guard.
Like Oracle RAC, Oracle Data Guard is implemented on top PROTECTING FROM COMPUTER FAILURE
of commodity hardware. “It requires only a standard network
link between the two computers,” says Oracle’s Kumar. “Oracle
Data Guard not only saves customers money, but also provides
them with a more efficient and better disaster recovery solution.” Oracle Real
These technologies work together to provide a complete Application Clusters
(Oracle RAC)
solution. “Oracle has developed very powerful availability Oracle RAC enables enterprise
technologies including Oracle RAC, Oracle Data Guard, grid computing by clustering
multiple servers that are highly
Flashback, and RMAN. These technologies are each generally available and easily scalable.
acknowledged to be ‘best-of-breed’ solutions in their space,”
says Juan Loaiza, senior vice president for the Systems
Technology group at Oracle. “Just as importantly, we have
architected these technologies to work seamlessly together
to cover all classes of downtime. Without this end-to-end
approach, you continue to run the risk of unwanted down- trative overhead from the direct public donation pool. “We
time even if you build resilience into each and every compo- promise that for every pound a member of the public directly
nent of your architecture.” gives us, we will give a pound directly to the projects we
support,” says Gill. “All time savings and systematic efficien-
SERIOUS PROTECTION cies offered by digital technology help us meet this promise to
By the time Comic Relief’s Red Nose Day ends, about 14 the public.”
million people will have watched the telethon broadcast on On the key nights, both of Comic Relief’s data centers
the BBC, and the Comic Relief Web site will have received move into action. Oracle RAC provides protection from server
hits from up to one million unique visitors. The organization’s failure within the primary site. Unless there’s an emergency,
financial model depends on quickly depositing donations into the centers combine their processing capacities to keep indi-
STEVE LYONS

interest-bearing accounts. Interest yields are one of the income vidual e-commerce transaction processing times to less than
streams that Comic Relief uses to avoid paying for adminis- two seconds. “Oracle RAC is the cornerstone of our high-

34 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

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 Keeping your systems and data highly available means being prepared for both planned and
unplanned situations. Oracle offers a complete set of technologies that enable you to avoid costly
downtime and rapidly recover from unforeseen failures.

PLANNED DOWNTIME
Storage Failure Rolling Patch Updates
Automatic Storage Oracle Database supports the
Management simplifies disk application of patches to the nodes
management tasks such as of an Oracle RAC system in a
mirroring, helping DBAs rolling fashion, keeping the AVOIDING
protect against data storage system available during DOWNTIME
failure. patch application.
FOR SYSTEM
CHANGES

BEST PRACTICES

Maximum Availability Architecture

Oracle offers a fully Rolling Release Upgrades
integrated and proven Oracle Database 10g
blueprint for building highly supports database software
available systems, called upgrades and the application
Maximum Availability of patch sets in a rolling
Architecture (MAA). fashion–with near-zero
database downtime—
using Oracle Data Guard.

Dynamic Resource Provisioning

Adapting to changes in hardware
Human Error and meeting resource demands
Human error can occur can be accomplished without
on many levels; Oracle disrupting the database.
AVOIDING DOWNTIME FOR DATA CHANGES
offers capabilities such as
Flashback technologies for
analyzing and correcting
human error, and LogMiner Partitioning
for analyzing and auditing Database administrators can
data changes. partition large tables and indexes,
helping prevent regular
maintenance from impacting
entire tables and confining
errors to smaller data sets.

Fast Start Fault Recovery Online Reorganization

Fast Start Fault Recovery Administrators can perform
provides fast and predictable maintenance operations without
recovery from system faults disrupting database operations
and database failures. or users who are updating or
accessing data.

availability solution. It gives us a chance to cope with flash
crowds, high demand, or even a failure in one of our database
servers with little or no degradation of performance to an end
user,” says Gill.
As an extra precaution, Oracle Data Guard provides
disaster recovery failover between data centers by keeping
a standby copy of the database at the second data center
synchronized with the database at the primary location. “If
there’s a failure in our primary environment, we can shift
sessions to the other site,” he says. Comic Relief’s standby
JOHN BLYTHE
HIGH AVAILABILITY IS A PHILOSOPHY
Fannie Mae, a financial services company that collaborates
with mortgage lenders to ensure that loans are available
for home buyers, needs guaranteed system uptime for its
financial systems and to meet federal regulations. “Regulatory
requirements dictate that all of our critical applications have
complete redundancy to meet specific high-availability needs,”
says Mano Malayanur, manager of technical operations and
infrastructure management and infrastructure architect for
Fannie Mae’s Guarantee Businesses Systems (GBS) group.

database also provides a critical layer of additional data pro- The GBS arm of Fannie Mae runs Oracle Database 10g
tection and high availability. Release 2, a local high-availability cluster, and Oracle Data

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 35

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 COMPREHENSIVE HIGH AVAILABILITY
Guard, for its production database to stay running if a break- Enterprises need a wide range
down occurs. Oracle Data Guard provides what Malayanur of tools to develop an effective
calls “our preferred solution for disaster recovery.” Some HA architecture. These tools from
applications in Fannie Mae also use Oracle RAC for additional Oracle can help ensure success.
high-availability and horizontal scaling.
Before Fannie Mae’s GBS group made its choice, it con- Oracle Real Application
ducted an extensive proof-of-concept project that tested how Clusters (Oracle RAC)
well its database, middle layers, and client infrastructure could Oracle RAC lets enterprises set
handle the projected business demand. The project simulated up clusters of multiple servers to
1 million transactions per hour, with each transaction includ- provide processing power to applica-
ing many hits to the Oracle database. But beyond speed, the tions that access a single database.
project also had to prove data reliability—Fannie Mae wanted No application or database changes
nothing less than zero when it came to data loss protection. are required. If a server fails, the sur-
This approach is fairly typical for other applications in viving servers in the cluster automat-
Fannie Mae. The performance tests help Fannie Mae reduce ically take over processing chores.
the time required for a failover to occur between servers at Oracle RAC provides scalability; addi-
a site, and between sites. “When we go into our test lab,” tional servers can be introduced into
says Malayanur, “we have a clear idea of what we want to the cluster in a nondisruptive fashion
see: Is the solution compatible with the other layers in our to help with increasing workloads.
technology stack? How long does it take to fail over from Oracle RAC is a database option
server to server and site to site? Is the failover automated? for Oracle Database 10g Enterprise
And then we do tests to verify that the numbers are where Edition and is included with Oracle
we expect them to be.” Database 10g Standard Edition.
Oracle Data Guard proved to be a key technology compo- Oracle Data Guard
nent in the organization’s data protection scheme. The pilot Oracle Data Guard enables IT man-
agers to automatically maintain
a synchronized, standby copy of
SNAPSHOTS a production database in another
location that can immediately be
Comic Relief elevated to primary status should
www.comicrelief.com
the production database fail.
Location: London Industry: Charitable fund-raising
Employees: 95 Oracle products: Oracle Database 10g Release 2, Oracle Oracle Enterprise Manager
Application Server 10g, Oracle Data Guard, Oracle Real Application Clusters This systemwide administration tool
gives IT managers a Web-based
Fannie Mae interface for monitoring database
www.fanniemae.com performance, allocating resources,
Location: Washington DC Industry: Financial services
and managing Oracle RAC instal-
Employees: 5,500 Oracle products: Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Real
lations and Oracle Data Guard
Application Clusters, Oracle Data Guard, Oracle Enterprise Manager
standby databases.
Farecast, Inc Automatic Storage
www.farecast.com Management (ASM)
Location: Seattle, Washington Industry: Online travel This integrated file system and
Employees: 25 Oracle products: Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Real volume manager eliminates the
Application Clusters, Oracle Enterprise Manager
need for third-party storage man-
“K” Line America, Inc. agement software and simplifies
(A wholly owned subsidiary of Tokyo-based Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, Ltd.) storage management for Oracle
www.kline.com
databases. A feature of Oracle
Location: Richmond, Virginia Industry: Transportation
Database 10g, ASM makes it easy
Employees: 560 Oracle products: Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Real
Application Clusters to optimize performance of storage
subsystems. ASM’s built-in mirror-
Kemira GrowHow (U.K.) ing provides high availability by
www.kemira-growhow.com protecting against local disk failure.
Location: Chester, U.K. Industry: Fertilizer and agricultural products Flash Recovery Area
Employees: 450 (in the U.K.) Oracle products: Oracle E-Business Suite,
This area consists of a unified
Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Data Guard
disk-based storage location for all
recovery-related files, even daily
backups, for an Oracle database.
Automatically managed by Oracle
Database, this resource cuts recov-
ery time by eliminating downtime
associated with restoring archived
files from tape media.
Recovery Manager (RMAN)
RMAN automates and manages
backup and recovery processes for
Oracle databases, including auto-
matically backing up and recover-
ing data to the flash recovery area.
RMAN is integrated with the core
database engine, allowing it to do
its operations most efficiently.
Flashback
Flashback helps companies recover
from human error or logical corrup-
tion that results in damaged data,
and it does so at a level of granu-
larity appropriate for the corrective
action required. Flashback Query
can roll back changes from indi-
vidual queries; Flashback Table can
roll back data from a single table
to its last correct version. For wide-
spread data corruption, Flashback
Database lets users roll the entire
database to a desired point in time,
many times faster than traditional
point-in-time recovery methods.
LogMiner
LogMiner allows redo log files to
be read, analyzed, and interpreted
using SQL. IT managers can use
the analyses to audit changes to
data or recover deleted data.
Oracle Secure Backup
This secure network tape backup
software for Oracle databases
and file systems lets administra-
tors perform direct tape backups
without third-party software. It
provides an integrated, easy-to-use
backup solution that encrypts data
to tape to safeguard against the
misuse of sensitive data if backup
tapes are lost or stolen.
Maximum Availability
Architecture (MAA)
MAA provides an Oracle-validated
blueprint of technology and archi-
tectural best practices to achieve
highest availability.

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 “We wouldn’t trust our business processes
to other offerings. Oracle products have
scaled from large systems down to smaller
business servers, not up from PCs.”
—Dave Allen, IS Facilities Manager, Kemira GrowHow (U.K.)

project showed Oracle Data Guard could sustain synchronous

zero data loss protection and avoid any loss of information
for workloads running as high as 16 megabytes per second
of redo data. This is very high database throughput, easily
surpassing what is seen in most mission-critical applications.
Fannie Mae found that Oracle Data Guard could run at even
faster rates in asynchronous mode, for applications that didn’t
have such stringent data loss requirements.
Fannie Mae’s testing didn’t stop once the pilot project was
over. The company continues to test and audit the system
regularly to make sure that changes to the environment don’t
reduce its protection. “High availability is not something you
build on top of your existing applications,” Malayanur says.
“It needs to be thinking that pervades your entire process of
setting up an IT infrastructure.”
Dave Allen, IS Facilities Manager at Kemira GrowHow (U.K.) says that the company
CLEAR ROI chose Oracle technology because of its proven track record. “The Oracle database
Because they traditionally haven’t been designed to contribute is bombproof,” he says.
to daily business profitability, high-availability technologies
have been difficult to evaluate for ROI. The consequences of standby database and upgrade it to production mode—all
downtime may be real, but how can companies know if the without needing to perform any recovery tasks.
high-availability choices they’re making are financially sound? As a result of this configuration, Kemira not only elimi-
Kemira GrowHow (U.K.) grappled with this question as it nated the service-contract fee but also cut its database down-
reevaluated its high-availability service contract in 2003. The time window from the 24 hours outlined in its service contract
fertilizer and agricultural products company in the United to a few minutes. It estimates it can return its applications to
Kingdom had been relying on a service-level agreement with full production status in two hours or less in the worst-case
an outside firm that promised replacements for any faulty scenario of a complete data-center failure. “The investment we
hardware within four hours of crashing and a restoration of made upfront for the new technology was justified by cutting
data to the most recent daily backup within 24 hours. But costs from the old contracts,” says Dave Allen, IS facilities
because manual processes would take over in the interim, manager at Kemira GrowHow.
“resynching” of the systems could take much longer. Kemira chose Oracle technology because of its proven track
Kemira grew increasingly uncomfortable with that time- record. “We wouldn’t trust our business processes to other
table, concerned that disrupted order and shipment process- offerings. Oracle products have scaled from large enterprise-
ing would hurt the company long before repairs were made. class systems down to smaller business servers, not up from
Adding to the problem, the company was paying about PCs,” Allen says. “The Oracle database is bombproof.” O
US$37,000 for the service contract.
The company made some changes. Thanks to a 2004 Alan Joch (ajoch@worldpath.net) is a technology writer based in New England who
rearchitecting of its high-availability resources, Kemira reduced specializes in enterprise, Web, and high-performance-computing applications.
its maintenance costs, eliminated the service contract, and
simultaneously boosted its availability so it would see little
disruption in the aftermath of a system crash or site failure.
Kemira now runs the Oracle E-Business Suite on a two-node READ more about high availability
cluster in its primary data center. Oracle Data Guard syn- oracle.com/database/high-availability.html
oracle.com/technology/deploy/availability/techlisting.html#Avail
chronizes the primary database with a secondary instance at
a remote facility. If the production cluster or database fails, DOWNLOAD Forrester report on Oracle RAC
oracle.com/start keyword: RAC2
Kemira uses Oracle Data Guard to fail over to the remote

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 37

JF07_HiAvail.indd 37 11/20/06 3:49:10 PM

8.25x11.125 Coll07 Ad 11/8/06 12:58 PM Page 1

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 GO XML
Oracle Database 10g gives enterprises a way to manage
content-rich applications and diverse data with XML.
BY DAV I D BAUM
he increased use of content-rich applications and
the internet, particularly for business transactions, has
put new demands on enterprise databases. One way
to handle these demands is with the increased use of
XML. As a markup language capable of describing many dif-
ferent kinds of data, XML is used to store and exchange busi-
ness information—including structured, unstructured, and
semistructured data.
At the heart of Oracle’s XML strategy is Oracle XML
Database (Oracle XML DB), a unique feature of Oracle
Database 10g that allows for generating, storing, retrieving,
ENRIQUE FAJARDO
querying, and managing massive volumes of XML data. Oracle
XML DB has been adopted by many enterprises that are
seeking a way to take advantage of their database infrastruc-
ture and skills to manage diverse data.
JF07_XML.indd 39
STORAGE OPTIONS
One good example of how this works is CIMIRe—a govern-
ment agency in Belgium that manages retirement, disability,
and survivor benefits for workers and their families. The
agency maintains information about 12.8 million Belgian
citizens and uses Oracle XML DB to manage more than 200
million XML documents—and growing, by 70 million docu-
ments each year—making it one of the biggest XML databases
in Belgium. “We are dealing with high volumes of rather
complex XML data that need to be online for 45 years,” says
Philippe Delcourt, IT manager for CIMIRe. “The only way to
get the best-possible response time is to have a database that
does not treat XML as just text but rather understands XML.”
According to Delcourt, developers at the agency need to
be able to store and access XML data without compromising
ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 39
11/17/06 12:07:50 PM
 “The only way to get the
best-possible response time is
to have a database that does not
treat XML as just text but rather
understands XML.”
—Philippe Delcourt, IT Manager, CIMIRe

performance. “We want to avoid having two

databases—one for relational content and
another for XML data,” Delcourt says. “Since
both data structures are stored in our Oracle
database, we do not have to spend time inte-
grating, maintaining, and backing up two dif-
ferent data stores.”
Additionally, CIMIRe needs to be able to
exchange information in XML format with
other social security offices. Using XML in the
database allows the agency to send data to
these partners without making any transforma-
tions. And because Oracle’s XML functionality
is accessible through the standard SQL inter-
face, CIMIRe can use many applications to
query its XML data.
“We can use one interface to query and “We are dealing with high volumes of rather complex XML data,” says Philippe Delcourt, IT Manager for
CIMIRe, the government agency that manages retirement, disability, and survivor benefits for 12.8 million
update both relational and XML content,” Belgian citizens. Delcourt is pictured here with CIMIRe Database Administrator Alexandra Lejeune.
Delcourt says. “The complex XPath searches
are very fast, with subsecond response times,
and we have maintained this superb performance despite our system, according to a carefully defined structure,” she says.
growing volume of data.” “Using Oracle XML DB to create and store structured docu-
ments lets us automate a lot of the process.”
VOLUME SIMPLIFIED The Office worked with Oracle, Linsonic, and the Xcential
The State of California Office of Legislative Counsel finds Group to establish a data model by leveraging the schema-
that Oracle XML DB enhances the power of Oracle Database based aspects of the Oracle XML DB technology. “Being able
10g while reducing storage space and memory requirements. to create a very complex and powerful schema—and lever-
These capabilities are particularly appealing to the Office of age [Oracle] XML DB to implement it in an object-relational
Legislative Counsel, because it creates a massive document fashion—was a big time-saver,” explains Don Neithinger, a
repository for storing about 350,000 bills, constitutional consultant with Linsonic. “Oracle XML DB virtually elimi-
amendments, resolutions, and legislative measures. nated the pain of data modeling, since the data model evolved
The Office is responsible for drafting all of the legislation directly from the schema. The application is tightly coupled
for the California State Assembly and State Senate. It main- with the schema and allows users to mark up the documents
tains California statutes and codes—a compilation of all the the way they need to.”
bills that have been passed and signed into law, and Oracle ith the initial database develop-
Database 10g serves as a central repository for these. “We ment work behind them, the
selected Oracle because we needed a database that is highly Office is immersed in putting hun-
available and dependable and that can support relational dreds of thousands of documents in
structures along with flexible XML features as part of our bill- a searchable format for the public.
drafting system,” says Mendora Servin, product manager for “Most of our users are attorneys who
the Office of Legislative Counsel. don’t have time to learn complex
Servin and her team maintain the bill-drafting system for information systems,” says the
TON HENDRIKS

the State Assembly and State Senate. They also index all the Office of Legislative Counsel’s Servin.
documents to simplify searching and research. “Our drafting “Our Oracle-based system makes it easy for them to find the
system stores content in Oracle XML DB in a schema-based exact information they need.”

40 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF07_XML.indd 40 11/17/06 12:07:57 PM

 While users enjoy the simplicity, Servin’s
team appreciates Oracle Database 10g for its
performance, stability, and rapid-development
facilities. “Oracle Database 10g has been very
reliable,” Linsonic’s Neithinger says. “On top of
that, Oracle Database 10g has superior reposi-
tory features. No other vendor gives the same
degree of flexibility in how to store XML content
natively in the database.”
Neithinger says that fragment-level data
retrieval from XML documents is practically
instantaneous in Oracle Database 10g, even
when very large documents are involved. “A
document hierarchy is created within the folder
hierarchy that allows users to navigate very
quickly,” he says. “It’s a convenient way for users
to find specific parts of the California code.” “We selected Oracle because we needed a database that is highly available and dependable and that
can support relational structures along with flexible XML features as part of our bill-drafting system,”
The future looks extremely promising. says Mendora Servin, Product Manager for the State of California Office of Legislative Counsel.
Neithinger adds, “We are also very excited
about the next-generation XML storage capabil-
ities in the works, because they further enable efficient XML the strong data management capabilities that they offer.”
search and retrieval.” Of course, users don’t care whether data is structured or
unstructured, as long as the content is managed and stored
XML EVOLUTION efficiently. That’s why Oracle works closely with standards
As the popularity of XML grows, more enterprises are deploy- bodies to retrieve structured and unstructured data in a
ing XML-capable databases as back-end repositories, says unified way.
Noel Yuhanna, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Oracle offers “Oracle has expanded the capacity of the database to
native XML support to store both unstructured and semistruc- handle text as well as media, images, videos, spatial data,
PETER STEMBER

tured data into databases, including images, faxes, movies, and other kinds of information,” says Vishu Krishnamurthy,
XML, content, e-mail, and other complex datatypes,” he says. Oracle’s senior director of XML development. “We have pro-
“Customers like to use databases for this content because of gressively optimized speed and intelligence across datatypes

STRUCTURAL DETAILS
There are two primary ways to store XML
content in a relational database—structured
and unstructured.
Structured storage entails decomposing
the content of the XML document into a set of
objects. A benefit to this storage approach is
that the data can be accessed by applications
that understand only relational technology.
When an XML schema is registered with
Oracle XML DB, the required type defini-
tions are automatically generated from the
XML schema, so they can be decomposed
and stored in the database without any loss
of information. This allows Oracle XML DB
to leverage the full power of standard SQL
interfaces, while reducing storage space and
memory requirements.
With unstructured storage the entire XML
document is stored natively as a character
large object (CLOB) inside the database, and
this storage yields optimal throughput when
inserting and retrieving whole documents. This
approach allows the document to be retained
intact—increasingly important for digital signa-
tures and authentication.
Oracle Database 10g, which uses standard
access methods for navigating and querying
XML based on the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) XML data model, supports both XML
storage approaches.

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 41

JF07_XML.indd 41 11/17/06 12:08:05 PM

 “Oracle’s built-in XML functions give us the option to produce XML data files in a
single SQL query, which simplifies development and maintenance.”
—Dave Crichton, Senior Developer, British Skye Broadcasting

and enhanced the SQL syntax to handle uses Oracle XML DB to parse the messages
domain-specific information.” SNAPSHOTS and break them into relational structures,
Oracle has made XML a fundamen- which are then passed through to the data
CIMIRe
tal datatype—as part of Oracle XML DB, www.cimire.fgov.be warehouse. Setting up relational tables to
Oracle created the XMLType object to Location: Brussels, Belgium store XMLType data enables the growing
process XML documents and messages, Industry: Public sector media company to keep schema-less XML
with instances for both structured and Oracle products: Oracle Database 10g, documents in its Oracle database.
unstructured storage. In Oracle Database Oracle XML DB Crichton likes several things about the
10g Release 2, Oracle added standards- XML functionality in Oracle Database 10g—
State of California Office of
based XQuery capabilities, a schema-based Legislative Counsel namely, a notable performance improve-
resource metadata facility, a set of SQL func- www.leginfo.ca.gov ment, better stability, and plenty of room to
tions for data manipulation operations on Location: Sacramento, California scale to 10 million customers. “Oracle has
XML data, and much more. Industry: Public sector always given us the performance we need,
“Traditionally unstructured informa- Oracle products: Oracle Database 10g, and the XML functionality is becoming pro-
tion is stored in a file system that includes Oracle XML DB gressively more robust,” he says.
files, folders, and all associated metadata,”
British Sky Broadcasting Group
says Krishnamurthy, “but this paradigm is www.sky.com VERSATILE FRAMEWORKS
inherently insecure and unreliable and cer- Location: Isleworth, U.K. XML has become a popular way to store
tainly doesn’t scale well. That’s why Oracle Industry: Media and entertainment and exchange complex information. Next-
provides the same access mechanism for Oracle products: Oracle Database 10g, generation application development stacks
all types of content that can be stored in a Oracle XML DB will build XML-based content-management
secure, centralized repository.” applications that are much more versatile
and dynamic.
MEDIA CONVERGENCE “That’s when the technology will move from the edge to
This approach to managing content is ideal for British Sky the core,” Oracle’s Krishnamurthy predicts, “as businesses
Broadcasting (BSkyB), the largest digital pay-television start using XML to store all types of business information
platform in the United Kingdom and Ireland and a leading and to build applications that include voice mail interfaces,
broadcaster of sports, movies, entertainment, and news. The videos, new sets of connections and associations, and collab-
company manages real-time XML data feeds, which contain orative work models.”
rich customer information—everything from the purchase of BSkyB’s Crichton agrees with that assessment. He says the
personal video recorders and high-definition television ser- company plans to use Oracle XML DB to produce output for
vices to a specific movie preference in the video-on-demand third parties, such as customer viewing profiles for informing
program. To support its burgeoning subscriber base, BSkyB targeted marketing campaigns.
deployed an Oracle data warehouse. “Oracle’s built-in XML functions give us the option to
“We’re using Oracle to capture a great deal of information produce XML data files in a single SQL query, which sim-
about subscribers—not just basic contact information but plifies development and maintenance,” Crichton explains.
also case-management data arising from technical inquiries,” “Oracle is definitely at the forefront when it comes to building
says Dave Crichton, a senior developer on BSkyB’s Customer XML functionality.” O
Marketing Business Intelligence team.
Crichton is responsible for maintaining a 3TB data ware- David Baum (david@dbaumcomm.com) is a freelance business writer based in
house of customer relationship management (CRM) infor- Santa Barbara, California.
mation about all of BSkyB’s 8.2 million subscribers, such as
customer name, contact information, location details, and
onsite equipment. The information is used to cross-sell and READ
up-sell additional products and services to these established “Using XML with XML DB and ODP.NET”
customers, as well as to reach out to new customers through- oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/williams_xmldotnet.html

out the United Kingdom.
Each night, BSkyB’s data warehouse is refreshed with infor-
mation from its CRM system in the form of XML data feeds
into relational data structures in the data warehouse. BSkyB
“Getting Started with Oracle XML DB”
download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/appdev.102/b14259/xdb02rep.htm
DOWNLOAD Oracle Database 10g
oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/oracle10g

42 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF07_XML.indd 42 11/17/06 12:08:06 PM

 Enterprise
Linux Support

From $99
Per server/per year*

Unbreakable Linux

oracle.com/linux
or call 1.800.ORACLE.1

*Terms, conditions and restrictions apply. $99 price solely includes access to Linux binaries and updates.
24x7 global support starts at $399 per year/per server.

Copyright © 2006, Oracle. All rights reserved. Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft and Siebel are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates.
Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Tux design is copyrighted work of Larry Ewing.

CORP_Linux_99Price_1730

JF07_043.indd 1 12/6/06 2:00:03 PM

 EX

JF07_SMB.indd 44 11/17/06 3:41:41 PM

 PANDINGTO MEET DEMANDS BY DAV ID A . K EL LY

SMALL AND MEDIUM BUSINESSES

GROW UP WITH ORACLE.

mall business doesn’t mean small requirements.

Take the case of fast-growing Bebo.com, the
United Kingdom and Ireland’s most popular social
networking site.
“Our scalability challenge is managing the huge
growth in our page views,” says Michael Birch, Bebo’s
cofounder, CEO, and CIO. “We already have 27 million
subscribers and turn about 4 billion page views a month.
25 percent [monthly] growth on top of that is significant.”
Bebo started out with Oracle Database 10g Standard
Edition One, but has since scaled up to Enterprise Edition
so it could spread the load across additional processors.
“Oracle Database 10g allows us to scale trouble-free,
I’m pleased to say,” says Birch. “We just built a standby
database and then flipped our systems over.”
Bebo’s experience is a good example of the types
of pressures facing today’s small and medium busi-
nesses (SMBs)—business demand for fast perfor-
mance, high availability, data security, and scalability
GIL ADAMS

in an IT environment where resources are tight. For

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 45

JF07_SMB.indd 45 11/17/06 3:41:46 PM

 companies who can meet these demands, the result is
improved relationships with customers and partners, reduced
risk, and an ability to adapt to changing market conditions.
“There are no global boundaries anymore, so even small
and medium companies can compete with the big guys,” says
Donald Feinberg, vice president and distinguished analyst at
Gartner. “Because of that, SMBs need enterprise-quality soft-
ware applications to compete and run their business. They
need the same performance, reliability, and much of the same
functionality that large companies need.”
Enter Oracle. While Oracle built its reputation by serving
the needs of enterprise customers, it has taken its core prod-
ucts and packaged them into solutions suited to SMBs. “Oracle
makes it very easy to develop, deploy, and scale systems using
Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware,” says Willie
Hardie, vice president of database marketing, Oracle. “Because
Oracle offers a choice of solutions built on a common code
base, SMBs get enterprise-class technology at a low entry cost,
which can then scale inexpensively.”
For Bebo, the choice of selecting Oracle Database 10g as
its primary database had a lot to do with reliability. “We can’t
Michael Birch is Cofounder, CEO, and CIO of Bebo.com, a fast-growing social
afford to be down, and we certainly can’t afford to lose data,” networking site. “We can’t afford to be down, and we certainly can’t afford to lose
says Bebo’s Birch. “That’s why we selected Oracle.” data,” he says. “That’s why we selected Oracle.”

SOCIAL SCALABILITY pooling capabilities on its Web servers to integrate every-

For a social networking site such as Bebo, having a scalable thing. “Interoperability with Oracle is very straightforward,”
and fast database to manage transactions and store user files is Birch says.
critical to growing the business. Every day Bebo’s users upload Another important consideration that’s been straight-
more than 1.2 million photos, which need to be stored in five forward for Bebo has been finding skilled personnel. Beyond
formats and managed by their Oracle database. two internal administrators, Bebo occasionally uses a freelance
“We’ve been growing at 25 percent a month, and we’re consultant. Birch says: “It’s definitely an advantage that Oracle
hoping to continue that,” says Birch. “Without the right infra- is commonly used. It wasn’t that hard for us to find skilled
structure, it gets increasingly difficult to resources to help manage our growth.”
cope with that rate of compound growth.” SNAP SHOTS
Although Oracle Database 10g Standard HIGH AVAILABILITY AND SECURITY
Edition One on a two-CPU server running Bebo For the American Osteopathic Association
SUSE Enterprise Linux met Bebo’s initial www.bebo.com (AOA), located in Chicago, selecting
Location: San Francisco
startup needs, Birch realized that he Oracle Database 10g Standard Edition
Employees: 18
needed to upgrade to handle the site’s Oracle products: Oracle Database 10g
One wasn’t just about performance or ease
phenomenal growth. By upgrading to of use. It was also about agility.
Enterprise Edition, Birch was able to take American Osteopathic Association “It’s not just the breadth of the Oracle
advantage of features such as partitioning, www.osteopathic.org architecture that’s great. It’s our ability to
which helps manage the company’s scal- www.do-online.org adapt it as our business needs change,”
ability requirements. Location: Chicago says Bryan Pawlak, director of the AOA’s
Employees: More than 150
Another database feature that Birch Development division within the depart-
Oracle products: Oracle Database 10g
finds particularly useful is Oracle’s index- Standard Edition with Oracle Real ment of Information Technology. “If we’re
optimized table capability. “We found Application Clusters to grow and double the amount of trans-
that it substantially reduces the amount actions through our database, we could
of random I/Os that we do,” he says. “It Property Condition Assessments just add a node to our grid to increase
improves database performance and limits www.pcallc.com capacity. Oracle gives us the capability to
Location: Pasadena, California
the additional investment we’d otherwise expand our environment as we grow—it’s
Employees: More than 400 nationwide
need to make in additional hardware.” a great concept.”
PETER STEMBER

Oracle products: Oracle Database 10g

Bebo’s database has to be integrated Standard Edition One, Oracle XML Publisher, The AOA is a medical association that
with its Java applications, so Bebo uses Oracle Application Server Standard Edition One represents more than 59,000 osteopathic
Oracle’s JDBC drivers and the connection physicians (DOs) in the United States.

46 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

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 “Oracle Database 10g allows us to scale
trouble-free, I’m pleased to say. We just
built a standby database and then flipped
our systems over.”
—Michael Birch, Cofounder, CEO, and CIO, Bebo

Osteopathic doctors, like medical doctors, can prescribe drugs,

perform surgeries, and work in different medical specialties.
The AOA’s key functions include accrediting the osteopathic
medical schools, postgraduate training programs, and board
certification process for medical specialists, as well as track-
ing all the credentials of its 59,000 DOs throughout their
careers. Therefore, in addition to meeting the basic needs of
a large membership organization, the AOA needs to ensure
data security and comply with all HIPAA privacy standards
and different data integrity standards of the organizations it
works with.
“We could have chosen Microsoft SQL Server, but we
selected Oracle for our database back end because we wanted
Bryan Pawlak (left) and Mike Zarski of the American Osteopathic Association appreciate
its robust features and its high-availability model,” says Mike the Oracle architecture for its robust features. “The stability of Oracle was a real
Zarski, the AOA’s director of the department of Information winner for us in terms of choosing the platform,” Zarski says.
Technology. “The stability of Oracle was a real winner for us in
terms of choosing the platform. Also, the security features that Application Clusters (Oracle RAC). “We’re expanding our use
are available in the Oracle environment really met our needs of the Oracle database by implementing a grid clustering envi-
across the board. The fact that it was available on Linux is also ronment,” Pawlak says. “Going to grid made sense for us from
a huge factor for us.” many perspectives—from the high-availability and security
Pawlak agrees. “We love Oracle on Linux,” he says. “We’ve perspective, it’s a huge win for us. We’ll also be able to add on
seen great stability, security, and performance on the platform.” services to the grid as we go along—for example, the Oracle
The AOA went live with Oracle Database Standard Edition Internet Directory component—when we need it.”
One as a back end for its portal infrastructure in June 2005.
More than 36,000 members have access to the portal, with COMBINED SOLUTION BENEFITS
more than 20,000 regular daily users. “We’re just scratching Smaller companies sometimes can take advantage of new
the surface on what we could use different parts of the Oracle technologies to make a big difference in their efficiency and
architecture for; we’re looking to expand our production use ultimately their bottom line. Take Property
of more Oracle technologies,” says Pawlak. Condition Assessments (PCA), based
The AOA is in the process of upgrading to Oracle in Pasadena, California. PCA is a
Database 10g Standard Edition with Oracle Real national architectural and engi-

ORACLE’S SOLUTION FOR SMBS

Balancing business requirements with limited IT
resources is a key driver for most growing busi-
nesses. “The biggest issues with SMBs are budget
and resources,” says Gartner’s Donald Feinberg.
“They need hardware and software that can be
installed and maintained with minimal staff.”
To help solve that problem, Oracle has
created technology that can meet the strin-
ANDREA MANDEL
database and access to a browser to develop
secure Web-based applications,” says Oracle’s
Willie Hardie. “You can easily consolidate data
off in-secure desktop applications into a secure,
reliable, and scalable database.”
Oracle has simplified the installation, con-
figuration, and management of its database and
middleware. “Given the resource constraints
rewrites. Oracle’s Standard Edition and Standard
Edition One products contain the same common
code as Enterprise Editions; therefore, upgrading
is a simple process.”
Competitive pricing is also important in the
SMB market. “The entry-level cost for Oracle
Database 10g Standard Edition One starts at
$149 per user,” says Hardie. “It’s the same entry

gent requirements of the SMB market. Oracle of SMBs, it’s important that software is easy to price point for Oracle Fusion Middleware, so you
Application Express, a feature of Oracle use,” says Hardie. “It’s also important that the can get the entire Oracle technology stack to
Database 10g, is one such solution. “With Oracle technology you start out with can easily scale store, share, secure, and manage your data for
Application Express, all you need is an Oracle at low cost without forklift upgrades and code very little cost.”

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 47

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 “The Oracle Database gives us a critical
advantage in its XML support, its stored
procedure support, and its data structures.”
—Thomas Clark, CIO, PCA

neering firm that performs due-diligence reports for buyers,

investors, and building owners. The company’s assessment
solution provides flexibility now—and can be upgraded in the
future as its business needs grow.
Here’s how it works: PCA employees evaluate buildings
and visit properties across the country. After they inspect a
property, they remotely enter data into an XML form, which
PCA then turns into a readable report for property owners. To
coordinate all this data, PCA uses Oracle Application Server
Standard Edition One to support its expanding application
requirements and business needs and Oracle XML Publisher to
create reports for internal and external use.
“We chose Oracle because of its architectural design and
its features,” says Thomas Clark, PCA’s CIO. “Oracle Database
gives us a critical advantage in its XML support, its stored pro-
Thomas Clark of PCA sees his organization growing with Oracle. “Today, it’s not
cedure support, and its data structures.” just about the database. It’s really about interconnecting people with data, and the
Thanks to the integration of XML and a combination of Oracle architecture helps us do that.”
database and middleware capabilities, PCA can quickly gener-
ate reports and executive summaries. PCA’s reports can run in the XML Publisher–based reports throughout our company, we
excess of 300 pages, examining all property conditions that increased business by 40 percent while adding only one team
can influence cost or purchase decisions. This data reviews member,” Clark reports. “We’ve achieved a huge productivity
structural analysis; heating, ventilation, and air conditioning gain through the use of these Oracle tools. It greatly benefits
systems; elevators; architectural overviews of how the space is all our customers as well.”
used; and more. For growing companies like PCA, saving money and
“Our reports are complex. XML Publisher is great because helping customers are essential to good business. But PCA’s
it can output reports into multiple file formats with a click of Clark has found something else that’s important for his com-
the mouse,” says Clark. “We typically output to PDF format, pany’s future growth—creating a strong working relationship
but we can also produce our work in [Microsoft] Word, Excel, with Oracle.
or native XML files—whatever fits the needs of our customer.” “What’s impressed me most, and what makes Oracle
Due to regulatory changes, PCA is also evolving into an unique, is that they really work supportively with a small
online service provider for government clients. Starting in company. They’re not making a lot of money off us. But,
2007 it will be rolling out a packaged version of its collection, they’ve made a very loyal customer out of me,” says Clark.
analysis, and reporting tools for public-sector customers. This “Ultimately it’s the relationship that’s important, not just the
package can be customized for individual customer needs, cre- software. We look to Oracle as a partner, someone that will
ating a budgeting application for property assets for an entire work with PCA to grow our business.” O
portfolio of properties. PCA’s Oracle infrastructure allows
clients to meet their future property asset challenges with David A. Kelly (dkelly@upsideresearch.com) is a business, technology, and travel
better information. writer who lives in West Newton, Massachusetts.
The company currently uses Oracle Database 10g Standard
Edition One but even now is looking ahead. “In the future,
we’ll probably grow into a clustered environment,” says Clark.
“Today, it’s not just about the database. It’s really about inter-
connecting people with data, and the Oracle architecture helps READ more about SMBs
oracle.com/solutions/mid
us do that.”
While PCA hasn’t completed a full return on investment LEARN ABOUT resources for small and medium business
PHIL SALTONSTALL

oracle.com/technology/smb
(ROI) on its database investments, it knows that this is a
VISIT the Linux Technology Center
winning approach. On the middleware front, the company is oracle.com/technology/linux
already seeing improvements. “Last year when we implanted

48 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF07_SMB.indd 48 11/17/06 3:42:03 PM

 d e v e l o p e r OPEN SOURCE
Embedding Open Source
The Oracle Berkeley DB family of products exemplifies Oracle’s open source commitment.
racle’s role in open source devel-
opment has been a well-kept
secret. It’s also the reason for
this column: To inform you
about Oracle’s commitment to open
source software—a commitment mea-
sured by significant investments in
ongoing development and support across
a wide variety of initiatives.
“As ever, Oracle is driven by cus-
tomer demand for choice, flexibility,
and a lower cost of computing,” says
Ken Jacobs, Oracle vice president,
product strategy, Server Technologies.
“In addition to contributing to many
open standards and creating products
that implement those standards, Oracle
invests significant resources in develop-
ing, testing, optimizing, supporting,
and contributing to open source tech-
nologies such as Linux, PHP, Apache,
Eclipse, Oracle Berkeley DB, and
InnoDB. Oracle is clearly a leader in
embracing open source solutions as
a viable choice for development and
deployment in the enterprise.”
UNDER THE HOOD
A prime example of Oracle’s true com-
mitment to open source is Oracle
Berkeley DB, an embeddable open
source database used in applications
and devices that demand a fast, scalable,
transactional database engine. Running
on all major operating systems (Linux,
UNIX, Windows, embedded Linux,
QNX, VxWorks, and Macintosh OS),
Oracle Berkeley DB is available under
a dual licensing model that has made it
tremendously popular among both open
source and commercial customers.
With an estimated 200 million
deployments, there’s a good chance
you use Oracle Berkeley DB every day
without realizing it. You’ll find Oracle
Berkeley DB “under the hood” in
JF07_OpenSource.indd 49
everything from Motorola cell phones,
Microsoft/Groove’s collaboration suite,
and Sun’s Java Enterprise System to
Ericsson routers, EMC storage boxes,
every distribution of Linux, a popular
Web search engine, and a leading Web
retailer. Several major stock exchanges
and banks also use Oracle Berkeley DB,
and many authentication systems rely on
Oracle Berkeley DB to store user, profile,
and preference information.
“Where there’s a device or applica-
tion that has a lot of information moving
through it, and some of that information
needs to be stored reliably in a fast, scal-
able, transactional embedded database
engine, that’s most likely where you’ll
find Oracle Berkeley DB,” says Mike
Olson, Oracle vice president, Embedded
Systems. “When you’re sending e-mail,
surfing the Web, or using your cell
phone, you have no idea that you’re
hitting a database—it’s all happening
entirely transparently.”
Olson explains that because data
management software can be used in
anything from small mobile devices
to enterprise applications to carrier-
grade infrastructure, the average person
encounters Oracle Berkeley DB dozens of
times each day through various transac-
tions and devices. “There’s pretty broad
use of Berkeley DB in the Web 2.0 and
service-oriented architecture space, so
it’s difficult to visit a Web site without
hitting some Berkeley DB somewhere,”
explains Olson. “One of the Web’s
leading retailers uses it as a front-end
cache for all of the data it delivers to
users, so your personalization informa-
tion is all cached in Oracle Berkeley DB.”
FROM BERKELEY TO SLEEPYCAT TO ORACLE
Oracle Berkeley DB’s roots can be traced
to its namesake in the early 1990s, when
Olson was a student at the University
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY R IC H SCHWERI N
of California at Berkeley. Olson, Margo
Seltzer, and Keith Bostic collaborated
to develop a new key/value database to
replace the Database Manager (Dbm)
file-based storage found in UNIX
systems. This database evolved to
become Berkeley DB version 1.85 and
was broadly distributed with the release
of 4.4BSD UNIX in 1992. The Berkeley
DB code became very popular and was
widely adopted, but users wanted com-
mercial support and new features added
to the software.
In response to the increasing demand
for features and support, Seltzer and
Bostic founded Sleepycat Software in
1996. The company released Berkeley
DB version 2.0 in 1997, 3.0 in 1999, and
4.0 in 2001, with multiple point releases
in between. In 2003, Sleepycat added a
second product to its offerings, Berkeley
DB XML, and in 2004, the company
added Berkeley DB Java Edition. In
February 2006, Oracle acquired Sleepycat
Software and the Berkeley DB family
became the Oracle Berkeley DB family.
“At the time of the acquisition, there
was some speculation that Oracle’s inten-
tions were less than honorable and that
the world’s largest enterprise software
company was simply buying open source
companies to quash them,” recalls Olson.
“Instead, Oracle continues to make sig-
nificant investments with several new
product releases and global support. Our
engineering team has been hard at work,
building exactly the road map and prod-
ucts that we had planned to do before—
we’re just doing it as part of a much larger
and more capable organization.”
Community pundits agree. “Nearly a
year later, we’ve seen nothing less than
good stewardship of Berkeley DB on
Oracle’s part, and I think most people
recognize that,” says Stephen O’Grady,
principal analyst with RedMonk, a
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 49
11/22/06 10:23:13 AM
 OPEN SOURCE
Denver, Colorado–based IT analyst firm.
“Beginning with Oracle’s long-standing
commitment to Linux, there’s certainly a
measure of goodwill toward Oracle from
a developer perspective. And Oracle has
done a pretty good job of supporting a
variety of open standards that are of inter-
est to the developer community. Sleepycat
and Berkeley DB are no exception.”
DUAL LICENSE: TWICE AS NICE
Oracle Berkeley DB is distributed under a
dual license. Customers can select either
an open source license that permits inter-
nal use and redistribution within open
source applications at no charge, or a
commercial license that enables the redis-
tribution of Oracle Berkeley DB within
proprietary applications.
“The open source license allows you
to download the software, to build it
into your applications, and to use it at
no charge. You can get the software from
the Oracle Web site (without register-
ing), build it into your applications, and
use it,” explains Olson. “The restriction
is that if you distribute the application
that you build, your application must
also be open source. In our thinking,
this is really playing fair.”
Of course, there are commercial
vendors that simply can’t do that. “For
customers who can’t give away their
intellectual property, Oracle Berkeley DB
is available under a commercial license.
If you’re distributing a proprietary appli-
cation that uses Oracle Berkeley DB,
then buy the proprietary license to use
it and distribute it without giving your
source code away,” says Olson.
“If you’re open source, we’re open
source, and you can use the software on
the same terms you use all the other open
source projects you use,” says Olson. “On
the other hand, if you’re a commercial
vendor, we’ll behave exactly like all your
other commercial suppliers. And you get
all of the contractual assurances and busi-
ness guarantees that you would normally
expect in a contract of that sort.”
Olson is quick to point out that
Oracle Berkeley DB’s dual license has
many benefits for developers, in both the
open source and commercial markets.
“The license revenue allows us to invest
50 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
JF07_OpenSource.indd 50
More Eyeballs, Shallow Bugs
The idea that the involvement of a huge user community focused on a project can result in higher-quality
code is a common assertion made by open source supporters. In his widely popular collection of essays
on the open source software movement and Linux, The Cathedral and the Bazaar (O’Reilly Media, 2001),
author Eric S. Raymond states that, “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.”
As cofounder of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), a nonprofit organization that manages and promotes
open source through the OSI certification mark and program, Raymond believes that if you throw a large
enough number of beta testers and developers at a project, issues (aka bugs) are more rapidly identified
and fixed. But not everyone agrees with this notion. Critics claim that the real work on open source
projects is done by small groups of insular insiders, ignoring the teeming masses of external contributors
who don’t contribute much anyway—a criticism that Stephen O’Grady, principal analyst with IT analyst
firm RedMonk, takes issue with.
“While I think it’s something of a misnomer to believe that simply because a product is open source, it’s
intrinsically more secure and more reliable and so on, it is true that certainly having these sources available,
you can have users fix problems and fix them more rapidly,” says O’Grady.
resources to make the product better, not Oracle Berkeley DB 4.5 and Oracle
just for the folks who pay commercial Berkeley DB Java Edition 3.1, are a
license fees but also for the very large strong testament to Oracle’s commitment
open source community that makes use to open source development, but what’s
of Oracle Berkeley DB,” he says. “Even if in store for the future?
you’re using the open source version, you “At Oracle, unlike Sleepycat, we’ve
get tremendous benefits from Oracle’s got a much broader product line. Just in
significant development investments.” the embedded space, we’ve got Oracle
The commercial users are better off, Lite, Oracle Berkeley DB, and Oracle
too. “Paid licensees of Oracle Berkeley TimesTen. And, of course, we’ve got
DB benefit from the advantages that Oracle Database 10g, which supports
a very large open source community huge repositories of information in the
confers. Namely, lots of adoption, lots data center,” explains Olson. “As the
of testing, and lots of eyeballs looking only nonrelational product in Oracle’s
at the code and lots of experts willing portfolio, Oracle Berkeley DB fills out
to give free technical advice and create our product line for the embedded space,
complementary code,” says Olson. “It’s addressing a class of use cases that needs
an ideal situation where you’ve got a high performance, reliability, and scal-
huge user community and very high- ability but does not need SQL. Since the
quality code, but for commercial cus- very first day of Sleepycat, three things
tomers, their source code stays private.” matter in every single release: perfor-
(See the “More Eyeballs, Shallow Bugs” mance, reliability, and scalability, and that
sidebar for more information on open is going to continue to be the case.” O
source community development.)
Rich Schwerin (rich.schwerin@oracle.com) is a product
FUTURE INTEGRATION marketing manager with Oracle Technology Marketing.
The Oracle Berkeley DB product family
includes a trio of products: Oracle
Berkeley DB, a transactional storage
engine for untyped data in basic key/
READ more about the Oracle Berkeley
value data structures; Oracle Berkeley
DB product family
DB Java Edition, a pure Java version of oracle.com/technology/products/berkeley-db
Oracle Berkeley DB optimized for the DOWNLOAD Oracle Berkeley DB
Java environment; and Oracle Berkeley oracle.com/technology/software/products/
berkeley-db
DB XML, a native XML database with
XQuery-based access to documents DISCOVER more about Oracle and
open source
stored in containers and indexed based oss.oracle.com
on their content. The latest releases,
11/22/06 10:23:13 AM
 d e v e l o p e r FRAMEWORKS
Modeling Tables and Components
Maintain your data-centric business services with visual diagrams.
n previous columns, I’ve discussed
how you can use Oracle JDeveloper
to create data-bound Web pages
for an application’s view layer by
dragging and dropping components in
a visual editor. In a future column, I’ll
investigate similar capabilities that Oracle
JDeveloper provides for building Swing
applications. In this column, I focus on
a different aspect of Oracle JDeveloper,
examining two visual editors that let you
work on “back-end” artifacts such as
database tables and business components.
To follow along, make sure you’re
using the latest maintenance release of
Oracle JDeveloper (10.1.3.1), which
you can download (for free) from
oracle.com/technology/jdev. As I have
done in past columns, I’ll be using the
familiar EMP and DEPT tables in the
SCOTT schema in Oracle Database to
work through my examples.
VISUALIZING YOUR DATABASE SCHEMA
If you’ve ever worked with relational
databases, chances are that you’ve used
a database schema diagram to give you
a bird’s-eye view of the structure and
relationships of your application’s under-
lying tables. Oracle JDeveloper provides
a database diagram capability that lets
you design your database schema and
synchronize your schema changes with
the underlying database. To see how it
works, let’s create a simple diagram that
displays the EMP and DEPT tables.
Using Oracle JDeveloper, start by cre-
ating a database connection that maps
to the SCOTT schema; name it scott.
Then create a new application by using
the Web Application [JSF, ADF BC] tem-
plate, specifying oramag as the applica-
tion package prefix. Oracle JDeveloper
will automatically create Model and
ViewController projects for your
new application. Next, create a third
JF07_Frameworks.indd 51
Figure 1: Oracle JDeveloper database diagram showing the EMP and DEPT tables
project, by selecting File -> New from
the main menu to bring up the New
Gallery wizard. Select the Project cat-
egory, select Empty Project, and enter
Database for the project name in the
Create Project dialog box. Next, go to
the Application Navigator and double-
click the Database project to edit its
project properties. Go to the Technology
Scope page, shuttle Database to
the Selected Technologies list, and
click OK. This last step tells Oracle
JDeveloper that I will be using this
project for database modeling. It simpli-
fies my database design work, by having
Oracle JDeveloper filter out choices in
various dialog boxes that aren’t relevant
to the task at hand.
The next step is to create a database
diagram. Right-click the Database
project in the Application Navigator, and
select New. In the New Gallery dialog
box, select the Diagrams category and
Database Diagram. Name the diagram
Database Design. Click OK, and a new
diagram appears in the editor. Next,
in the Connection Navigator, expand
the Database folder, the scott connec-
tion, and the corresponding SCOTT
schema to show the folders containing
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY STEVE MUENCH
the SCOTT schema’s objects. Expand
the Tables folder, and hold down the
Ctrl key while selecting both the DEPT
and EMP tables. Drag the selected tables
onto the diagram, and release the mouse
button. In the Create from Database
Object dialog box, click OK to create
offline database objects. Your resulting
diagram should look similar to Figure 1,
showing two tables with a foreign key
constraint between them.
Next, select the DEPT table shape in
the diagram. If you don’t already see the
Property Inspector and the Component
Palette in your Oracle JDeveloper work-
space, use the corresponding options
on the View menu to display them.
The Property Inspector enables you to
configure any of the visual aspects of
your selected table, and the Component
Palette enables you to create new
schema objects by dropping them onto
the diagram. The Component Palette
supports a variety of schema objects,
including tables, views, sequences,
and synonyms. Furthermore, you can
perform many common tasks by making
changes directly to the diagram. For
example, to add a column to a table,
simply click inside the dotted rectangle
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 51
11/17/06 11:50:29 AM
 FRAMEWORKS
within the table shape, enter the new
column name information (such as
MANAGER_ID:NUMBER(5,2)), and press
Enter. You can also rename a column
or change its datatype by clicking the
column entry and editing it in place. In
addition, you can define one-to-many
relationships between two tables by
simply clicking the Foreign Key icon
in the Component Palette, clicking
the source table, and then clicking the
target table. And if you double-click
a schema object or relationship line
in the diagram, the appropriate visual
editor appears, allowing you to view and
modify the object’s full definition.
The tables and other schema objects
are known as “offline” objects, because
the changes you make in the diagram
do not immediately cause updates to the
database. Instead, you save your changes
to disk, and when you are ready to make
database changes, you generate a DDL
script that creates or alters your database
to match your database design. To gener-
ate a DDL script, right-click the database
diagram and select Generate -> Data
Definition Language for Diagram from
the context menu.
CREATING YOUR BUSINESS COMPONENTS
You can use Oracle JDeveloper busi-
ness components diagrams to visually
document and maintain the Oracle
Application Development Framework
(ADF) objects that implement your busi-
ness services. To demonstrate, let’s create
a simple diagram to work with entity
objects, view objects, and an applica-
tion module based on the underlying
DEPT and EMP database tables. In the
Application Navigator, right-click your
Model project and select New to open
the New Gallery dialog box. Select the
Diagrams category and the Business
Components Diagram icon. Name
the diagram Business Service, provide
oramag.model as the package name, and
click OK. Next, go to the Connection
Navigator, select the DEPT and EMP
tables (as you did in the last section),
and drag them onto the diagram. In the
Create from Database Object dialog
box, select Business Component Entity
Objects, and click OK.
52 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
JF07_Frameworks.indd 52
As a result, Oracle JDeveloper creates
new Dept and Emp entity objects and
adds them to the diagram. It also creates
an association between the objects based
on the foreign key constraint specified
in the table definition. Note that you
can now modify these components in
much the same way you did in the pre-
vious section. You can use the Property
Inspector to change a component’s visual
aspects, the Component Palette to create
new components, and onscreen editing
functions to perform common inline
tasks such as adding or modifying attri-
butes. Furthermore, you can double-click
any component to bring up the respective
component editor for in-depth editing.
Now drag a view object compo-
nent from the Component Palette,
and drop it onto the diagram. Give it
the name EmployeeList, by typing that
name directly into the new view object
shape. Next, select the data the View
Object query will reference. To do so,
hold down the Ctrl key while selecting
the Empno, Ename, and Sal attributes
from the Emp entity on the diagram.
Then drag the selected attributes to the
new view object and release the mouse
button. As a result, the Emp entity now
becomes the primary entity for the new
view object and the selected attributes
are added to its attribute list.
You can also add related join infor-
mation to the view object. For example,
to add the department name of each
employee, just select the Dname attribute
from the Dept entity and drop it onto the
view object. Note that Oracle JDeveloper
automatically adds the primary key attri-
bute (in this case, Dept.Deptno) from a
secondary entity and shows a message
alert indicating that it has done so.
Next, drop an Application Module
component from the Component Palette
onto the diagram. Give it the name
EmpModule, by typing that name directly
into the new application module shape.
Add an instance of the EmployeeList
view object to the EmpModule’s data
model, by dragging the view object and
dropping it onto the application module.
By default, Oracle JDeveloper gives the
view instance the name EmployeeList1,
but you can change it to something
more meaningful (such as AllEmployees),
by clicking the view instance shape and
typing a new name. Finally, you can test
the application module directly from
the diagram by selecting it and selecting
Test from the context menu.
Your diagram will automatically
update to reflect changes you make
to any component, regardless of how
you make them. For example, I have
used familiar business components
wizards in past articles to create view
objects and view links. In this example,
you could create a Departments view
object based on the Dept entity and
a view link between Departments and
EmployeeList. Then you could use
the Application Module editor to add
master/detail linked view instances
named Departments and EmployeeList
to its data model. After you do so, the
diagram will update to automatically
show the changes to the data model.
The online version of this column,
at oracle.com/technology/oramag/
oracle/07-jan/o17frame.html, includes
information on polishing, publishing,
and printing your diagram.
This whirlwind tour is meant to help
you boost your own visual development
skills up a notch. Hopefully, you’ll use
these and other diagramming tools pro-
vided in the Oracle JDeveloper environ-
ment on your next project. O
Steve Muench is a consulting product manager for
Oracle JDeveloper. In his more than 16 years at Oracle,
he has developed and supported Oracle tools and
XML technologies and continues to evangelize them.
Muench coauthored Oracle ADF Developer’s Guide for
Forms/4GL Developers (Oracle, 2006), and he shares
tips and tricks on OTN and in his Dive into BC4J and
ADF Weblog (radio.weblogs.com/0118231).
READ online-only column content
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/07-jan/
o17frame.html
READ more about Oracle
JDeveloper 10g and Oracle ADF
oracle.com/technology/products/jdev
oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/tips/
muench/designpatterns
DOWNLOAD Oracle JDeveloper 10g
oracle.com/technology/products/jdev
11/17/06 11:50:29 AM
 d e v e l o p e r ODP.NET
Using PL/SQL Associative Arrays
Bring the power of PL/SQL stored procedures to ODP.NET.
uppose you’ve just received an
e-mail detailing several IT initia-
tives, two of which will affect
your future application develop-
ment techniques. First, all applications
should be designed to minimize network
utilization. And second, applications that
use Oracle databases must use PL/SQL
for access to the database structures.
Knowing that you need to use PL/SQL
in the database as the application pro-
gramming interface (API) and that you
need to reduce network usage, where
do you begin? Fortunately, ODP.NET’s
support for PL/SQL associative arrays can
help you meet both IT mandates.
ODP.NET developers can use PL/SQL
as an API to the data in the database and
use associative array binding to reduce
network round-trips. The result is a
reduced workload for both the network
and Oracle Database, which means faster
performance and better scalability for
your applications.
THE SAMPLE APPLICATION
Suppose that one of the reasons for
the PL/SQL and performance mandates
is that your company is growing
rapidly: The IT department alone has
three new job classifications—database
administrator, manager, and vice
president. This column demonstrates
how to use .NET, PL/SQL, and associa-
tive arrays to add these job categories
to an Oracle database—with minimal
network utilization.
The sample developed in this column
uses the HR schema provided with Oracle
Database. This schema includes a JOBS
table that contains a row for each job.
THE PL/SQL CODE
PL/SQL code will provide the interface
between the application and the database.
The associative_array package specifica-
JF07_ODPnet.indd 53
BY M A R K A. WI LLI AMS
codeLISTING 1: The PL/SQL code
create or replace package associative_array as
-- define an associative array type for each column in the jobs table
type t_job_id is table of jobs.job_id%type index by pls_integer;
type t_job_title is table of jobs.job_title%type index by pls_integer;
type t_min_salary is table of jobs.min_salary%type index by pls_integer;
type t_max_salary is table of jobs.max_salary%type index by pls_integer;
-- define the procedure that will perform the array insert
procedure array_insert (p_job_id in t_job_id,
p_job_title in t_job_title,
p_min_salary in t_min_salary,
p_max_salary in t_max_salary);
end associative_array;
/
create or replace package body associative_array as
-- implement the procedure that will perform the array insert
procedure array_insert (p_job_id in t_job_id,
p_job_title in t_job_title,
p_min_salary in t_min_salary,
p_max_salary in t_max_salary) is
begin
forall i in p_job_id.first..p_job_id.last
insert into jobs (job_id,
job_title,
min_salary,
max_salary)
values (p_job_id(i),
p_job_title(i),
p_min_salary(i),
p_max_salary(i));
end array_insert;
end associative_array;
/
tion and body code in Listing 1 are the SQL> desc jobs
interface, and it runs in the database’s
HR schema. (Note that a Microsoft Name Null? Type
Visual Studio developer might use Oracle ------------------------------ -------------------- ---------------------------------
Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET JOB_ID NOT NULL VARCHAR2(10)
or a tool such as Oracle SQL Developer to JOB_TITLE NOT NULL VARCHAR2(35)
create and edit the PL/SQL code.) MIN_SALARY NUMBER(6)
The associative_array package con- MAX_SALARY NUMBER(6)
tains code for both the package specifica-
tion and the package body. The package Because each datatype in the
specification declares the single proce- associative_array package is defined
dure that will be implemented in the to be a table of each database column
package body as well as four datatypes type, the package code effectively creates
that define the parameter types to the four arrays that match the types of their
procedure. Each type represents a respective columns in the JOBS table.
column in the JOBS table, which has the For example, the t_job_id type is
following structure: declared to be a single-column table
ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 53
11/17/06 11:54:03 AM
 ODP.NET
(a PL/SQL table, not a database table)
whose type matches that of the job_id
column in the JOBS table.
Each single-column PL/SQL table is
essentially an array. The array_insert pro-
cedure in the associative_array package
body takes four parameters (one for each
column in the table); each parameter is
an array of values supplied by the .NET
client application.
The statement for inserting the rows
into the JOBS table resembles a traditional
INSERT statement, except that it uses the
FORALL keyword and that the inserted
values are identified by a lowercase i.
The FORALL keyword allows PL/SQL
to process all of the elements in the
associative array as a group rather than
looping over the array, as with a typical
FOR LOOP statement.
The lower and upper bounds of the
array are indicated by the first and last
methods. The lowercase i in the values
clause identifies the correct element in
the array for PL/SQL retrieval.
CREATING THE C# CODE
With the PL/SQL interface code available
in the Oracle database instance, it’s time
to deploy the .NET client application
code, shown in Listing 2 (available with
the online version of this column, at
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/
07-jan/o17odp.html).
Because the data processing logic is in
the database, the client code is concerned
largely with creating parameters, setting
values, and invoking the code in the
database. Note that the code for inserting
data contains no SQL statements, because
the PL/SQL interface has been colocated
with the data in the database.
To test the new PL/SQL interface, run
the C# console application—available at
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/
07-jan/o17odp.zip—in Visual Studio.
First, change the connection string to
the appropriate values for your Oracle
database instance so ODP.NET can pass
associative arrays, then compile the code
in Visual Studio, and then select Debug
-> Step Into from the Visual Studio
menu to see how it works.
As you step through the code,
note that the application creates an
54 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
JF07_ODPnet.indd 54
Figure 1: Stepping through the sample
OracleCommand object with the
CommandText property value set to the
PL/SQL package name and procedure
(associative_array.array_insert).
Next, the application creates
Oracle-Parameter objects for each param-
eter to the PL/SQL stored procedure. The
application then sets each parameter’s type
to the OracleDbType to match that of the
targeted column for each parameter.
One key point to note as you step
through the code is that the application
must correctly set the collection type for
each parameter to OracleCollectionType
.PLSQLAssociativeArray for associative
arrays to work correctly. This is what
enables the ODP.NET application to bind
an OracleParameter object, as a PL/SQL
associative array, to the PL/SQL stored
procedure (see Figure 1).
After setting the collection type, the
application assigns the values (for the
three new jobs) that will be inserted into
the JOBS table. Next, the application sets
the size of each array, adds the param-
eters to the OracleCommand object’s
parameter collection, and invokes the
stored procedure to insert the data.
Finally, the application queries the
table to show that the three new jobs
(IT_DBA, IT_MAN, and IT_VP) were
successfully added to the JOBS table.
GOING FURTHER
PL/SQL associative arrays are not limited
to INSERT operations. You can also use
them to perform SELECT, UPDATE, and
DELETE operations. I encourage you to
experiment further with PL/SQL associa-
tive arrays to discover how your appli-
cations may benefit from centralized
data access via a PL/SQL API as well as
from a mechanism for bulk data sharing
between Oracle databases and .NET
middle tiers. O
Mark A. Williams (mawilliams@cheshamdbs.com) is
an Oracle ACE, an Oracle Certified Professional DBA,
the author of Pro.NET Oracle Programming (Apress,
2004), and a contributor to the Oracle Data Provider
for .NET forum on Oracle Technology Network.
READ online-only column content
oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/07-jan/
o17odp.html
READ more about PL/SQL
associative arrays
Oracle Database PL/SQL User’s Guide and Reference
download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/
appdev.102/b14261/toc.htm
Oracle Data Provider for .NET Developer’s Guide
download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/win.102/
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 d e v e l o p e r BROWSER-BASED
Sizing Up Performance
Tips and techniques for optimal Oracle Application Express performance
s Oracle Application Express
becomes more popular, many
users are asking for guidance on
sizing and performance tuning.
In this column, I’ll show you a quick and
convenient way to estimate performance
and sizing. I’ll also demonstrate how to
identify and deal with performance issues.
Here are some of the more common
questions this column will answer:
O

How much hardware, especially how
many CPUs, will I need to handle a
given workload?
O

How many users will my application
support?
O

How do I locate my performance
bottlenecks?
Let’s start with some background.
UNDERSTANDING ORACLE APPLICATION
EXPRESS APPLICATION PERFORMANCE
The key to optimal performance for most
Oracle Application Express applications
is to keep the average page-view times
relatively short. Scaling is linear: For
example, an application with average
page-view times of 10 milliseconds (ms)
will be able to handle about 10 times as
many concurrent users as an application
with average page-view times of 100 ms.
You can use the performance statistics
collected by Oracle Application Express
to easily approximate how well an
Oracle Application Express application
will scale. The performance statistics are
available on the Monitor Activity page.
Assuming that the application is well
tuned, with efficient SQL and PL/SQL,
the single most important sizing factor is
the CPU.
For example, suppose you are devel-
oping an Oracle Application Express
application that is required to support
1,000 page views per minute. On a dual-
CPU system, the application would need
to achieve 500 page views per minute,
JF07_Browser.indd 55
per CPU, or 8.33 page views per CPU per
second. Meeting this requirement dictates
that the average page-view time in the
application must not exceed 120 ms.
The relationship between the available
CPUs and the required page views per
minute results in the average response
time per page, which can be expressed in
the following equation:
(N*60)= A
P during the peak hour.
where N is the number of CPUs, P is the
number of page views per minute, and A
is the average response time per page.
Using this simple equation, you can
approximate the required average page-
view time to support a targeted number
of page views per minute. By altering
the number of CPUs or page views per
minute, you can establish clear perfor-
mance targets for your application.
An application’s average page-view
time can also help you predict the
impact a change in the size of your user
community will have as that community
grows. To determine how many users
the application can support, start by first
determining the number of page requests
during a given time period.
For example, if an average session
comprising 50 page views takes 10
minutes, then the application supports
5 page views per minute for a typical
session. If you are sizing the applica-
tion to allow for 1,000 page views per
minute, the application will support 200
concurrent users per session.
Extrapolating this data to approxi-
mate the daily user community, let’s
further assume that all users are in the
same time zone and that, on average,
each user performs two sessions per
eight-hour day, resulting in 100 page
views (2 * 50 page views per session).
Because you are sizing the application for
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY M IKE HI CHWA
1,000 page views per minute, multiply
the number of minutes in eight hours
(480) by the page views per minute
(1,000) to determine that the applica-
tion can support 480,000 page views per
eight hours, or 4,800 users.
As a rule of thumb, you should size
for your busiest hour, because an appli-
cation may serve only 100 page views
per minute in the course of a day but
may serve 1,000 page views per minute
Another rule of thumb is that you
should ensure an average page-view time
of 300 milliseconds or less. For high-
volume applications, with many hun-
dreds or thousands of concurrent users,
the goal should be an average page-view
time of 150 milliseconds or less.
FINDING AND ELIMINATING THE BOTTLENECKS
The overhead associated with the genera-
tion of a page view in Oracle Application
Express is fairly static. Any other process-
ing of developer-created SQL and PL/SQL
in an Oracle Application Express applica-
tion is in addition to this static overhead.
The easiest way to begin tuning your
Oracle Application Express application
is to run the application as an end user
with an adequate volume of real data.
Then, using the Monitor Activity feature
of Oracle Application Express, you can
readily identify the poorest-performing
pages in the application (see Figure 1).
Once you have identified the poorest-
performing pages, you can examine them
in Debug mode, by running the applica-
tion and clicking the Debug link in the
Developer Toolbar. Debug mode renders
the page concurrently with timing infor-
mation—you’ll see time codes that cor-
respond to specific Oracle Application
Express actions as well as additional
details about item names, computation,
and processing points.
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 55
11/17/06 11:44:25 AM
 BROWSER-BASED
Figure 1: Page views by weighted page performance report, available in Monitor Activity
By identifying steep jumps in the
elapsed time in the debug output, you
will find the poorest-performing page
elements. For example, here is a snippet
from a page run in debug mode:
...
0.05: Region: Projects
0.06: Show report
0.06: Determine column headings
0.06: Activate sort
0.07: Parse query as: MIKE1
0.07: Binding: “:P24_SEARCH”=”P24_
SEARCH” value=””
0.07: Print column headings
0.07: Rows loop: 15 row(s)
0.18: Region: Icon View
...
Note the jump from 0.07 seconds
elapsed to 0.18 seconds elapsed. This
jump indicates that the query took
0.11 seconds to execute, which, in this
example, is a large percentage of the total
page time and thus an excellent target for
performance tuning.
TUNING SQL
The most common area of tuning focus
is SQL. The Oracle Application Express
engine parses, binds, executes the state-
ment, and fetches the results of the SQL
for a reporting region. Use bind variables
whenever possible to avoid unnecessary
parsing and promote reuse of shared
SQL by Oracle Database.
Additionally, ensure that an optimal
query plan is being used for the
query. Use Explain Plan from the SQL
Commands menu to easily generate
plans for a particular query.
56 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007
JF07_Browser.indd 56
For a thorough examination of
every element of SQL and PL/SQL on
a particular page, you can enable SQL
tracing for the entire page view. SQL
tracing generates a trace file on the server
that you can analyze with the Oracle
utility TKPROF. (See “Debugging an
Application” in the Oracle Application
Express User’s Guide for more informa-
tion about using TKPROF in Oracle
Application Express.)
TUNING PAGE ELEMENTS
Page processes, computations, authori-
zations, validations, and conditions are
other common tuning opportunities in
Oracle Application Express applications.
The performance of these elements
on the page should be readily appar-
ent when you run your application in
Debug mode. Here are some guidelines
for these page elements:
Set page processes to run on a per-page
(rather than per-session) basis. If you are
employing application-level processes,
you can set the process to run once
per session or per page view. Keep in
mind that using the per-session option
for an application process can affect all
the other page views in the application.
A poor-performing application-level
process can affect every page view in
an application.
Optimize page zero components. Page zero
components are rendered on every page,
so take special care to optimize all page
zero logic.
Consolidate numerous PL/SQL blocks into
packages. If you are writing large
PL/SQL blocks in a page, consolidate
them into PL/SQL packages, which are
ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
then invoked from your application.
Use declarative conditions. Declarative
conditions are faster than dynamic SQL
and PL/SQL conditions; for example,
using an “Item=Value” condition is faster
than using the PL/SQL expression
“:ITEM=value.”
Use “Rows X to Y” pagination for reports
that return numerous rows. “Rows X to
Y of Z” takes longer to compute than
the simple “Rows X to Y” pagination
scheme. With “Rows X to Y of Z,” if
your report returns 900 rows, Oracle
Application Express will need to fetch
all rows to obtain the total row count;
with “Rows X to Y,” on the other hand,
the reporting engine needs to fetch only
Y + 1 rows.
CONCLUSION
Using the sizing guidelines presented in
this column will help you estimate the
performance and scalability of Oracle
Application Express–based applications.
If you’re not happy with an application’s
performance, use these pointers to
locate the slowest pages and then iden-
tify the poorly performing components
within those pages. With this informa-
tion, you can ensure that your Oracle
Application Express applications meet
performance expectations. O
Mike Hichwa (michael.hichwa@oracle.com) is vice
president of software development at Oracle and
manages Oracle Application Express, Oracle SQL
Developer, and other database development tools.
READ more about
application tuning
Oracle Application Express User’s Guide
download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B31036_01/doc/
nav/portal_booklist.htm
TKPROF
Oracle Database Performance Tuning Guide
download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/
b14211/toc.htm
DOWNLOAD Oracle Application
Express 2.2.1
oracle.com/technology/products/database/
application_express/download.html
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11/17/06 11:44:27 AM
 d e v e l o p e r PL/SQL PRACTICES
The Right Place for PL/SQL
Best practices for PL/SQL location, location, location
write packages and procedures in both
Oracle Database and Oracle Developer
applications (Oracle Forms). How should I
decide where to put my code?
Another way to frame this question is
to ask what the scope of your program
should be. That is, from which programs
in your application can it be called?
Within just a single form? All forms?
From within a single program on the
server? From any schema that connects
to your instance?
I make my decision on these issues
by following this principle: Implement
the program as closely as possible to where
it is used (called).
LOCATION AND RELOCATION DEMONSTRATION
For this answer, I use the following
business requirement to demonstrate the
variations possible and appropriate ways
to define my code:
My team is building a call support
application. Purchasers of my compa-
ny’s product call us when they have a
problem, and we put their calls into a
queue if they cannot be handled imme-
diately. I must now write a program
that distributes unhandled calls to
members of the call support team. The
package that will hold all of this logic is
call_manager. The procedure for distrib-
uting unhandled calls is distribute_calls.
Listing 1 shows the header and execut-
able section of this program.
As you can see, this executable
section is quite readable: While there is
still at least one unhandled call, then for
each employee in the specified depart-
ment, if the current caseload is less than
the average for that department, assign
the next open call to that employee.
Then continue only if there are still
unhandled calls.
The executable section calls many
subprograms to get the work done:
JF07_PLSQL.indd 57
BY STEVEN FEUERSTEI N
codeLISTING 1: distribute_calls procedure
PROCEDURE distribute_calls (
department_id_in IN departments.department_id%TYPE)
IS
BEGIN
WHILE ( calls_are_unhandled ( ) )
LOOP
FOR emp_rec IN emps_in_dept_cur (department_id_in)
LOOP
IF current_caseload (emp_rec.employee_id) <
avg_caseload_for_dept (department_id_in)
THEN
assign_next_open_call (emp_rec.employee_id);
END IF;
END LOOP;
END LOOP;
END distribute_calls;
codeLISTING 2: Four local programs in distribute_calls
PROCEDURE distribute_calls (
department_id_in IN departments.department_id%TYPE)
IS
FUNCTION calls_are_handled RETURN BOOLEAN
IS BEGIN ... END calls_are_handled;
FUNCTION current_caseload (
employee_id_in IN employees.employee_id%TYPE)
RETURN PLS_INTEGER
IS BEGIN ... END current_caseload;
FUNCTION avg_caseload_for_dept (
employee_id_in IN employees.employee_id%TYPE)
RETURN PLS_INTEGER
IS BEGIN ... END current_caseload;
PROCEDURE assign_next_open_call (
employee_id_in IN employees.employee_id%TYPE)
IS BEGIN ... END assign_next_open_call;
BEGIN
O calls_are_unhandled function: takes it handled (as opposed to unhandled)
no arguments; returns TRUE if there One other thing to note: I haven’t yet
is still at least one unhandled call, actually implemented any of these pro-
FALSE otherwise grams. I am using top-down design, also
O current_caseload function: returns the known as stepwise refinement, to stay
number of calls (caseload) assigned to focused on the overall, high-level logic
that employee of the program. That way I avoid getting
O avg_caseload_for_dept function: consumed by all the little details.
returns the average number of calls I can now go down to the next level
assigned to employees in that department of detail and figure out where to put the
O assign_next_open_call procedure: implementation for these subprograms.
assigns the employee to the call, making As I said, my rule is: Define the
ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 57
11/17/06 12:00:36 PM
 PL/SQL PRACTICES

codeLISTING 3: Relocating the current_caseload function I slap my forehead, dig out the
e-mail, and find that the function is
CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY call_manager
IS named dept_avg_caseload. I check for
FUNCTION current_caseload ( the existence of call_util in my PL/SQL
employee_id_in IN employees.employee_id%TYPE) editing environment, and—lo and
RETURN PLS_INTEGER
IS BEGIN ... END current_caseload; behold—the call_util.dept_avg_caseload
function in all its already implemented
PROCEDURE show_caseload ( beauty is there, waiting to be used.
department_id_in IN departments.department_id%TYPE)
IS BEGIN ... END show_caseload; I now go back to my distribute_calls
procedure, delete the avg_caseload_for_
PROCEDURE distribute_calls ( dept function, and change my executable
department_id_in IN departments.department_id%TYPE
) section as shown in Listing 4.
IS BEGIN ... END distribute_calls; Now one of the subprograms I am
END; using in my procedure is declared so
/
far away that I don’t even have control
over its implementation and may never
codeLISTING 4: Revised distribute_calls executable section even see that implementation. Is that a
BEGIN problem? No. I have more than enough to
WHILE ( calls_are_unhandled ( ) ) do and worry about!
LOOP The call_util.dept_avg_caseload func-
FOR emp_rec IN emps_in_dept_cur (department_id_in)
LOOP tion is implemented far from my usage,
IF current_caseload (emp_rec.employee_id) < but it is as close as possible to all usages,
call_util.dept_avg_caseload (department_id_in) which span various packages, and so
THEN
assign_next_open_call (emp_rec.employee_id); must be declared in the package specifi-
END IF; cation of call_utils.
END LOOP; This column concludes online,
END LOOP;
END distribute_calls; at oracle.com/technology/oramag/
oracle/07-jan/o17plsql.html, with a
checklist of recommendations on where
subprogram as closely as possible to its it makes more sense for me to move the to locate your PL/SQL code for Oracle
usage. Following that rule without any current_caseload function out of both Developer applications. O
further analysis, I would define each distribute_calls and show_caseload.
of the programs as local subprograms So with a little reshuffling of code, I Steven Feuerstein (steven.feuerstein@quest.com) is
within distribute_calls itself, as shown end up with the package body shown in Quest Software’s PL/SQL evangelist. He has published
in Listing 2 (the ellipses [...] indicate the Listing 3. 10 books on Oracle’s programming language, including
implementation of the subprograms). Now I have moved the current_ Oracle PL/SQL Programming and Oracle PL/SQL Best
Procedures and functions directly caseload function farther away from Practices (O’Reilly Media), and has created the free
defined within the declaration section distribute_calls, but that is because it is Quest Code Tester for Oracle.
of any PL/SQL block are called local or used by two subprograms in the package.
nested subprograms. In this example, they So it is now as close as possible to both
can be called only within the distribute_ of its usages. Yet I don’t expect or see
calls procedure, and that certainly defines any need for current_caseload to be used READ online-only column content
them as closely as possible to their usage. outside of the distribute_calls package, oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/07-jan/
o17plsql.html
Yet, as I do this, I find myself think- so I do not place the header of current_
ing about the other programs I have caseload in the package specification. READ more
PL/SQL Practices
already written in this package and how Now my attention turns to avg_ oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/plsql
I might want to use some of this new caseload_for_dept. Something about Best Practice PL/SQL
code in programs I’ll write in the future. this program seems so familiar. What is oracle.com/technology/pub/columns/plsql
I realize, for example, that last week it, what is it? Oh, yeah! My coworker LEARN more about using PL/SQL
I wrote another function that is very Sandra sent out an e-mail last week collections with SQL object types
similar to current_caseload. It is now letting us all know that she had put Oracle Database PL/SQL User’s Guide and Reference
download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/
“buried” inside a procedure named together a package named call_util that appdev.102/b14261/objects.htm#sthref2434
show_caseload. Rather than implement contained several handy utility programs, DOWNLOAD Oracle Database 10g
the same logic twice (and thereby need including a function that returned the oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/
oracle10g
to debug and maintain it in both places), average caseload for an employee.

58 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF07_PLSQL.indd 58 11/17/06 12:00:37 PM

 t e c h n o l o g y RECOVERY
Recover in a Flash
Reduce database recovery time, using the Oracle flash recovery area.
f you are using Oracle
Recovery Manager
(RMAN) as a backup tool
for your Oracle database,
you probably already know
that you have two options
for the backup location: disk
and tape. If you choose the
former, you may back up to
any location available to the
server, but you must make
sure the location has enough
space for the backups. You
also have to remove the old
backups to make room for
the new ones, keep track of
the redundant backups, and
make sure that backups and
archive logs are available.
FLASH RECOVERY AREA
To help manage disk backups, in Oracle
Database 10g Release 1 and later, you can
define a special disk area that serves as
a location for all types of backups. This
location is the flash recovery area (FRA).
Oracle Database manages the space inside
this area; keeps track of backups that are
needed; and if necessary, deletes old ones
to make room for new ones. By default,
the Oracle RMAN backups (both regular
and image copies), online redo logs,
archived logs, control files, and flashback
logs are created in the FRA. When new
backups or files demand more room,
Oracle Database automatically removes
the nonessential backups, freeing the DBA
from this chore. The files in the FRA are
considered nonessential when they become
obsolete according to the retention policy,
or when they have already been backed
up to tape with Oracle RMAN.
SETTING UP
DAN HUBIG
To set up the FRA, first decide on its
location and size. To set /home/oracle/
JF07_Flashback.indd 59
FRA as the location and 2GB as the size,
you issue the following while logged in
as the SYS user:
alter system set
db_recovery_file_dest_size = 2G;
alter system set
db_recovery_file_dest = ‘/home/oracle/FRA’;
To ensure that the values are set after
the database is restarted, put the following
lines in the initialization parameter file:
db_recovery_file_dest_size = 2G
db_recovery_file_dest = ‘/home/oracle/FRA’
If you are setting up the FRA on an
Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle
RAC) database, the FRA location must
be visible to all database nodes. So it
must be one of the following: a shared
file system, an NFS-mounted file system,
or an Automatic Storage Management
(ASM) disk group. If you use ASM, the
parameter is set as
db_recovery_file_dest = ‘+DISKGROUP1’
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY A RU P N A N DA
You can check the
values of the FRA param-
eters set by querying the
V$RECOVERY_FILE_DEST
data dictionary view:
select *
from v$recovery_file_dest;
For my example, the
result shows that there
are 51 files in the FRA
(the NUMBER_OF_FILES
column). To determine the
file types, you can check
the V$FLASH_RECOVERY_
AREA_USAGE view. This
view shows the used and
reclaimable spaces of each
type of file as percentages of this total
space. To get a more useful picture, you
can combine these two views in a single
query, shown in Listing 1, which shows
the total size of the files instead of per-
centages. As you can see from the output,
there are 34 archived log files, 16 Oracle
RMAN backup files, and 1 flashback log
file. The nonessential backups that can
be deleted show up as RECLAIMABLE.
If there is not sufficient space, the Oracle
RMAN backup will return with an error:
ORA-19809: limit exceeded for
recovery files
ORA-19804: cannot reclaim 104857600
bytes disk space from 1073741824 limit
To create enough space for the Oracle
RMAN backups to complete successfully,
either manually remove some backups
or increase the size of the FRA. To see
the list of image copies in the FRA
made by Oracle RMAN, you can use
the Oracle RMAN list copy of database
command, shown in Listing 2.
In addition to storing the backups of
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 59
11/17/06 3:33:35 PM
 RECOVERY
datafiles and flashback logs, the FRA can
also be configured to store archived logs,
control files, and online redo logs. For
information on these storage options, see
the “Configuring the Flash Recovery Area:
Advanced Topics” link in nextSTEPS.
IMAGE COPY
Backup sets are the Oracle RMAN default
backups, in which only the used blocks
in the datafiles are captured in the
backup files. Oracle RMAN image copies
are exact copies of the datafiles, with all
the blocks—used or not. Oracle RMAN
takes this image copy while the database
is up and running, and the database
need not be put into any special mode.
Here is how to make an Oracle RMAN
image copy backup:
run {
backup as copy
database;
} FILE_TYPE
This command, when run from the
Oracle RMAN command prompt, creates
the copies of the datafiles in the FRA
with an Oracle-generated name such as
o1_mf_users_2kmqr57t_.dbf.
INSTANT RECOVERY
Image copies in the FRA become truly
useful when you need an “instant recov-
ery.” Remember that these image copies
are copies of the datafiles—a fact recorded
in the Oracle RMAN catalog and the
control file. In case of a disaster, you don’t
need to restore the file; you can use the
copy as the principal datafile immediately.
Suppose that one of your datafiles has
become corrupted and needs recovery.
Traditionally, you follow this general
approach:
1. Take the tablespace offline.
2. Restore the datafile from the backup.
3. Recover the datafile to the point
of failure.
4. Place the tablespace online.
Step 2 may take a long time, depend-
ing on the size of the file, the speed
of the underlying disks, the transfer
rate from backup to the original data-
file location, and the other processes
running on the system. Suppose that
60 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
JF07_Flashback.indd 60
Oracle Data Guard and the FRA
If you are familiar with Oracle Data Guard, you might wonder how using this FRA recovery method is
different. Oracle Data Guard maintains physical or logical standby databases that are kept synchronized
with the primary database through the transfer and application of redo data. These standby databases are
geared toward disaster recovery and should not replace your backup-and-recovery operations. For example,
if you lose a file, you can restore that file from the physical standby database, but that approach may
take time, depending on the state and location of the standby database, and is the same as a traditional
recovery solution.
Oracle Data Guard, however, allows fast failover/switchover (role transition) to a standby database running
on separate servers and storage, which may be geographically separated, maintaining data availability,
in the event the primary database site goes down for any reason. The FRA, on the other hand, is local to
the database server, so although it provides quick access for recovery purposes, it is prone to the same
failure as the local site. For Oracle Data Guard, applications that utilize the database must be reconnected
to use the new primary database in case of a role transition. Because the FRA is local to the database,
no application reconnection is needed. Oracle Data Guard provides a predictable recovery time (time to
perform role transition), versus the time to recover FRA image copies, which is gated by the amount of redo
application needed to bring the image copies up-to-date with the rest of the database.
codeLISTING 1: Space, by file type, consumed in the FRA
select file_type, space_used*percent_space_used/100/1024/1024 used,
space_reclaimable*percent_space_reclaimable/100/1024/1024 reclaimable, frau.number_of_files
from v$recovery_file_dest rfd, v$flash_recovery_area_usage frau;
USED RECLAIMABLE NUMBER_OF_FILES
---------------------------------- --------------- ------------------------------- ------------------------------------------
CONTROLFILE .00 .00 0
ONLINELOG .00 .00 0
ARCHIVELOG 664.86 547.20 34
BACKUPPIECE 573.23 520.73 16
IMAGECOPY .00 .00 0
FLASHBACKLOG 6.07 .00 1
codeLISTING 2: RMAN report of image copy datafiles in the FRA
RMAN> list copy of database;
List of Datafile Copies
Key File S Completion Time Ckp SCN Ckp Time Name
--------- ------ -- -------------------------------- ---------------- ------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
4404 1 A 26-SEP-06 1607862 26-SEP-06 /home/oracle/FRA/PRODB2/datafile/
o1_mf_system_2kmqnygd_.dbf
4407 2 A 26-SEP-06 1607935 26-SEP-06 /home/oracle/FRA/PRODB2/datafile/
o1_mf_undotbs1_2kmqqy2b_.dbf
4405 3 A 26-SEP-06 1607907 26-SEP-06 /home/oracle/FRA/PRODB2/datafile/
o1_mf_sysaux_2kmqpcnz_.dbf
4408 4 A 26-SEP-06 1607939 26-SEP-06 /home/oracle/FRA/PRODB2/datafile/
o1_mf_users_2kmqr57t_.dbf
4406 5 A 26-SEP-06 1607926 26-SEP-06 /home/oracle/FRA/PRODB2/datafile/
o1_mf_example_2kmqqgto_.dbf
on your system, it takes more than two the time taken by the step from hours
hours to complete this step, making the to seconds. Here is the description of
tablespace data unavailable for the entire the recovery process, assuming that the
duration. This motivates you to take a USERS tablespace has been damaged:
look at minimizing recovery time. You First, check the file ID (number) and
consider using image copies to speed up name of the datafile of the tablespace.
the recovery. The output is shown in vertical format:
Using image copies, step 2 in the
recovery is replaced by “Instruct the select file_id, file_name
database to use the copy of the datafile from dba_data_files
instead of the original.” This reduces where tablespace_name = ‘USERS’;
11/17/06 3:33:36 PM
 FILE_ID : 4
NAME : /home/oracle/oradata/PRODB2/ Normal Operation Live Datafile

users01.dbf
Copy of Datafile
Connect to Oracle RMAN and com-
plete the rest of the recovery activities, DATABASE FRA
which are similar to the steps listed Damaged Datafile
(not useful)
Datafile Datafile Datafile
above except that Step 2 is now “Switch Datafile Datafile Datafile Copy Copy Copy
2 3 4
datafile 4 to the copy in the FRA.” All 2 3 4

the operations are shown in Listing 3.

After Switching to the FRA for Datafile 4
After the tablespace is brought
online, check the filename:

select name from v$datafile DATABASE FRA

where file# = 4;
Datafile Datafile Datafile Datafile Datafile Datafile
Copy Copy Copy
NAME 2 3 4 2 3 4
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/home/oracle/FRA/PRODB2/datafile/ Figure 1. Using a copy of a datafile
o1_mf_users_2kmqr57t_.dbf
codeLISTING 3: RMAN operations to switch to the FRA
Note that the filename is no longer RMAN> sql ‘alter tablespace users offline’;
/home/oracle/oradata/PRODB2/users01 sql statement: alter tablespace users offline
.dbf; rather, the copy in the FRA is shown RMAN> switch datafile 4 to copy;
as the original datafile. The tablespace datafile 4 switched to datafile copy “/home/oracle/FRA/PRODB2/datafile/o1_mf_users_2kmqr57t_.dbf”
becomes usable very quickly without a RMAN> recover datafile 4;
restore operation. Figure 1 shows original Starting recover at 26-SEP-06
and copy datafile status before and after using channel ORA_DISK_1
switching from a damaged datafile 4. starting media recovery
media recovery complete, elapsed time: 00:00:03
Finished recover at 26-SEP-06
SWITCHBACK
RMAN> sql ‘alter tablespace users online’;
Even though the datafile has been
sql statement: alter tablespace users online
quickly brought online to minimize
downtime, it is now in the backup loca-
tion, which may be on slower disks than codeLISTING 4: Switching back from the FRA to the original location
what the main database is on. You may
RMAN> backup as copy datafile 4 format ‘/home/oracle/oradata/PRODB2/users01.dbf’;
not want to run the database with the
datafile at this location for long; you Starting backup at 27-SEP-06
would typically want to move the data- using channel ORA_DISK_1
channel ORA_DISK_1: starting datafile copy
file back to the original location— input datafile fno=00004 name=/home/oracle/FRA/PRODB2/datafile/o1_mf_users_2kmqr57t_.dbf
/home/oracle/oradata/PRODB2/—as output filename=/home/oracle/oradata/PRODB2/users01.dbf tag=TAG20060927T103710 recid=45
soon as it becomes available. You can stamp=602246230
channel ORA_DISK_1: datafile copy complete, elapsed time: 00:00:01
use Oracle RMAN to accomplish this. Finished backup at 27-SEP-06
Here is a summary of the steps:
1. Make an image copy of the datafile at Starting Control File Autobackup at 27-SEP-06
piece handle=/home/oracle/FRA/PRODB2/autobackup/2006_09_27/
the original location. o1_mf_n_602246232_2ko34s42_.bkp comment=NONE
2. Take the tablespace offline. Finished Control File Autobackup at 27-SEP-06
3. Switch the datafile to the “copy” RMAN> sql ‘alter tablespace users offline’;
…
(however, in this case, the “copy” is at RMAN> switch datafile 4 to copy;
the original location).
4. Recover the tablespace. datafile 4 switched to datafile copy “/home/oracle/oradata/PRODB2/users01.dbf”

5. Place the tablespace online. RMAN> recover datafile 4;

These steps are presented in Listing 4. …
After the switchover, you can make sure RMAN> sql ‘alter tablespace users online’;
…
the datafile is back in its original location:

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 61

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 RECOVERY

select name from v$datafile burden of managing the space from the DBAs can direct all backups to a single
where file# = 4; DBA to the database. location that is managed by Oracle
Database. Using the Oracle RMAN
NAME BACK UP TO TAPE image copies in the FRA, DBAs can very
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Although the backup to the FRA comes quickly recover from damage to a datafile
/home/oracle/oradata/PRODB2/users01.dbf with great benefits, it is still not foolproof without using a traditional restore-and-
for normal disaster protection. Disks can recovery operation. O
In case of a failure, you save valuable fail, making these FRA backups disap-
time by quickly using the image copy of pear. Similarly, unlike tapes, disks cannot Arup Nanda (arup@proligence.com) has been an
the datafile in the FRA, and there is no be removed easily and stored at a differ- Oracle DBA for more than 12 years, handling all
need to restore it first. The same concept ent location. Therefore, you still need to aspects of database administration—from performance
can be applied to the entire database as back up the FRA to tape. To do so, use tuning to security and disaster recovery. He is a
well. If the original location of all the the following command in RMAN. It coauthor of PL/SQL for DBAs (O’Reilly Media, 2005)
datafiles is damaged, you can easily switch backs up all contents of the FRA, includ- and was Oracle Magazine’s DBA of the Year in 2003.
the entire database to the copy stored in ing archived logs:
the FRA. To switch to the FRA copy, issue
the following, which directs the whole run {
database to use all the latest image copies allocate channel c1 type sbt_tape;
in the FRA location as its datafiles: backup recovery area; READ more about the
} flash recovery area
“Configuring the Flash Recovery Area:
RMAN> switch database to copy; Advanced Topics”
download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/
CONCLUSION backup.102/b14191/rcmconfg001.htm#sthref476
Note that you can also perform the The primary objective of any backup
Flashback database command
above operations on the image copies design is to enhance the process of “Flash Back to a Better Time”
in any location without using the FRA. recovery—to make it faster and more oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/04-may/
o34tech_avail.html
However, using the FRA moves the reliable. Using the flash recovery area,

           

    


   


 


 


 

  

 






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62 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF07_Flashback.indd 62 11/20/06 10:53:03 AM

 t e c h n o l o g y ASK TOM BY TO M KYTE

On Top-n and Pagination Queries

Our technologist gets more results using ROW_NUMBER, RANK, and DENSE_RANK.
n a recent Ask Tom column the number of records returned by a 7 over (order by sal desc) <= 3
(September/October 2006), I wrote query) is to use the analytic function 8 order by sal desc
about using ROWNUM to perform ROW_NUMBER. It behaves similarly 9 /
top-n queries, getting the first n to the ROWNUM pseudocolumn but is row_number()
number of rows from an ordered result more flexible and has more capabilities. *
set, and pagination queries, getting rows Specifically, I’ll be able to use ROW_ ERROR at line 6:
n through m from a result set. NUMBER to get the “top-n records ORA-30483: window functions are not
In that column, I demonstrated how by some set of attributes” in the next allowed here
to use ROWNUM like this: section (“Top-n Queries by Something”).
Let’s look at what ROW_NUMBER The problem here is that ana-
select * can do. Here is an example query using lytic functions are evaluated after the
from ROW_NUMBER to assign an increasing WHERE clause and therefore cannot
(your_query) number to each row in the EMP table be used in the WHERE clause. That is
where rownum <= 10; after sorting by SAL DESC: not really a problem, however, because
I have inline views—I can apply a
in order to get the first 10 rows from SQL> select ename, sal, predicate to ROW_NUMBER after it is
“your query,” and how to use ROWNUM 2 row_number() assigned. For example
like this: 3 over (order by sal desc) rn
4 from emp SQL> select *
select * 5 order by sal desc 2 from (
from 6 / 3 select ename, sal,
( select rownum rnum, a.* 4 row_number()
from (your_query) a ENAME SAL RN 5 over (order by sal desc) rn
where rownum <= :M ) --------------- ----------- ----- 6 from emp
where rnum >= :N; KING 5000 1 7 )
FORD 3000 2 8 where rn <= 3
in order to get rows n through m from SCOTT 3000 3 9 order by sal desc
“your query.” JONES 2975 4 10 /
As always, there is more than one
...

way to do things in Oracle Database, JAMES 950 13 ENAME SAL RN

and these top-n and pagination queries SMITH 800 14 --------------- ----------- ------
are no exception. In this column, I’d KING 5000 1
like to take a look at alternative ways 14 rows selected. SCOTT 3000 2
to achieve this functionality by using FORD 3000 3
analytic functions and introduce another So, ROW_NUMBER allows me to
variation on the top-n query: getting easily assign this increasing number 3 rows selected.
the top-n records by some set of attri- after sorting, but at first glance, it
butes, such as getting the “set of rows doesn’t seem to support retrieval of just So, that demonstrates how to
representing the top three salaries by the first n rows: perform a top-n query by using ROW_
DEPTNO” from EMP. NUMBER and also points out a general
SQL> select ename, sal, issue with top-n queries. If you look at
TOP-N QUERY 2 row_number() that result, you see two rows with the
Another way to write a top-n query 3 over (order by sal desc) rn value 3000. What if, in the EMP table,
(which is similar to using the LIMIT 4 from emp three people, instead of just two, had a
clause in MySQL or using “set 5 where salary of 3000? The result obtained by
rowcount” in SQL Server to limit 6 row_number() the above query would be ambiguous—I

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 63

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 ASK TOM

would get three records, but the records SQL> select * ambiguity. They will do so, but the
I retrieved would be somewhat random. 2 from analytic functions might return more
For example 3 (select x,y, than n rows. In my opinion, when
4 row_number() the attribute I order by is not unique,
SQL> update emp 5 over (order by x) rn I want my query to return all of the
2 set sal = 3000 6 from t) relevant records—not just the first n
3 where ename = ‘SMITH’; 7 where rn <= 3; arbitrary ones. To that end, I can use
1 row updated. the RANK and DENSE_RANK analytic
X Y RN functions. Let’s take a look at what
SQL> select * -------–– -------- ------ they do:
2 from ( 1 100 1
3 select ename, sal, 1 200 2 SQL> select ename,sal,
4 row_number() 1 300 3 2 row_number()
5 over (order by sal desc) rn 3 over (order by sal desc)rn,
6 from emp 3 rows selected. 4 rank()
7 ) 5 over (order by sal desc)rnk,
8 where rn <= 3 Now, here’s what happens if I reload 6 dense_rank()
9 order by sal desc this table with the same data, just in a 7 over (order by sal desc)drnk
10 / different order: 8 from emp
9 order by sal desc
ENAME SAL RN SQL> truncate table t; 10 /
-------------– ----------- ------ Table truncated.
KING 5000 1 ENAME SAL RN RNK DRNK
SMITH 3000 2 SQL> insert into t --------------- ------------ ------ ---------- -------------
SCOTT 3000 3 2 values ( 1, 400 ); KING 5000 1 1 1
SQL> insert into t FORD 3000 2 2 2
3 rows selected. 2 values ( 1, 200 ); SCOTT 3000 3 2 2
SQL> insert into t JONES 2975 4 4 3
As you can see, FORD disappeared 2 values ( 1, 300 ); BLAKE 2850 5 5 4
from this result set. However, you might SQL> insert into t CLARK 2450 6 6 5
find that if you perform this update and 2 values ( 1, 100 );
...

query your data, FORD does not disap- 14 rows selected.

pear but rather SCOTT or SMITH does. SQL> select *
Which row would disappear would be 2 from The main things to note here are the
quite arbitrary. That shows a problem 3 (select x,y, following:
with top-n queries in general: If you are 4 row_number() O ROW_NUMBER assigns contiguous,

ordering by something nonunique, the 5 over (order by x) rn unique numbers from 1..N to a result set.
first set of n rows you get back may be 6 from t) O RANK does not assign unique

different, given exactly the same input 7 where rn <= 3; numbers—FORD and SCOTT tied for
data. For example second place—nor does it assign contig-
X Y RN uous numbers. No record was assigned
SQL> create table t -------–– -------- ------ the value of 3, because two people tied
2 ( x number, 1 400 1 for second place, and no one came in
3 y number 1 200 2 third, according to RANK.
4 ); 1 300 3 O DENSE_RANK, like RANK, does

Table created. not assign unique numbers, but it

3 rows selected. does assign contiguous numbers. Even
SQL> insert into t though two records tied for second
2 values ( 1, 100 ); All of a sudden, I get an entirely place, there is a third-place record.
SQL> insert into t different answer. This is something to You can use RANK and DENSE_
2 values ( 1, 200 ); be aware of when you perform top-n RANK in the same way you would
SQL> insert into t queries and the attribute you order by is use ROW_NUMBER to restrict the
2 values ( 1, 300 ); not unique. number of rows returned, but obvi-
SQL> insert into t Bearing this in mind, I can use ously you’ll get subtly different results.
2 values ( 1, 400 ); other analytic functions to remove the For example

64 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

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 SQL> select * SQL> select deptno, ename,sal, ries in each of the departments, I would
2 from ( 2 row_number() code the following:
3 select ename,sal, 3 over (partition by deptno
4 dense_rank() 4 order by sal desc)rn, SQL> break on deptno skip 1
5 over (order by sal desc)drnk 5 rank() SQL> select *
6 from emp 6 over (partition by deptno 2 from (
7 ) where drnk <= 3 7 order by sal desc)rnk, 3 select deptno, ename, sal,
8 order by sal desc 8 dense_rank() 4 dense_rank()
9 / 9 over (partition by deptno 5 over (partition by deptno
10 order by sal desc)drnk 6 order by sal desc)drnk
ENAME SAL DRNK 11 from emp 7 from emp
--------------- ----------- ------------ 12 order by deptno, sal desc 8 ) where drnk <= 3
KING 5000 1 13 / 9 order by deptno, sal desc
SCOTT 3000 2 10 /
FORD 3000 2 DEPTNO ENAME SAL RN RNK DRNK
JONES 2975 3 ---------------------- --------------- ------------ ------ -------- ----------- DEPTNO ENAME SAL DRNK
10 KING 5000 1 1 1 ------------------- ----------------- ------------ -----------
4 rows selected. CLARK 2450 2 2 2 10 KING 5000 1
MILLER 1300 3 3 3 CLARK 2450 2
That query returns “the set of MILLER 1300 3
people who make the top three sala- 20 SCOTT 3000 1 1 1
ries,” which is likely the desired result. FORD 3000 2 1 1 20 SCOTT 3000 1
Getting the first three records from EMP JONES 2975 3 3 2 FORD 3000 1
after sorting by SAL is rather arbitrary, ADAMS 1100 4 4 3 JONES 2975 2
because using exactly the same set of SMITH 800 5 5 4 ADAMS 1100 3
data, simply inserted in different orders,
you could observe different result sets 30 BLAKE 2850 1 1 1 30 BLAKE 2850 1
with ROW_NUMBER (because SAL ALLEN 1600 2 2 2 ALLEN 1600 2
is not unique). Using DENSE_RANK, TURNER 1500 3 3 3 TURNER 1500 3
however, I don’t get precisely three MARTIN 1250 4 4 4
records but, instead, a repeatable (deter- WARD 1250 5 4 4 10 rows selected.
ministic) result set. And I suspect that JAMES 950 6 6 5
I retrieve the set the end user really PAGINATION IN GETTING ROWS N THROUGH M
meant to retrieve—the set of people 14 rows selected. The last thing I’ll take a look at is per-
making the top three salaries. forming pagination with analytics.
Here I’ve used the PARTITION clause Pagination is common in Web-based
TOP-N QUERIES BY SOMETHING of the analytic function. This breaks up applications: The user inputs a set of
Using analytics is superior to using my result set virtually into some number criteria, which runs a query and then
the ROWNUM pseudocolumn when of groups and then applies the analytic lets the user click the Previous and
it comes to processing more-complex function to each group in turn, resetting Next buttons to page through the result
queries. For example, suppose you itself as it goes from group to group. set. To achieve this paging functionality,
wanted the top-n highest-paid people That allows me to assign an increas- the application needs to be able to get a
from the EMP table by DEPTNO. That ing number—using ROW_NUMBER, certain set of rows from the query. In
is, for each department, display the top for example—to the rows in each the prior column dealing with
three highest-paid people (or the set of department, resetting the ROW_ ROWNUM (at oracle.com/technology/
people making the top three salaries, NUMBER to 1 as I go from group to oramag/oracle/06-sep/o56asktom.html)
using DENSE_RANK). To achieve this, group. As you can see, it would be quite and in the “Top-n Query” section above,
I need to break up the result set by easy to get the “top 3 by DEPTNO” now, I demonstrated how to achieve that
DEPTNO, sort it by SAL DESC, and using an inline view and applying the pagination, but it required two levels of
then assign the analytic function result predicate WHERE RN <= 3 or RNK <= inline views and could be considered
to each row. Fortunately, analytics are 3 or DRNK <= 3, depending on which rather unwieldy. A syntactically easier
designed to do exactly this type of numbering method returns the answer way to write that pagination query is
work. For example you deem most applicable.
So, for example, to retrieve the set of select *
SQL> break on deptno skip 1 employees who make the top three sala- from (

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 65

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 ASK TOM

select /*+ first_rows(25) */ out with the salary top-n query. For faster and more efficient query plan step
your_columns, more details on deterministic queries, for a GROUP BY operation, and it defi-
row_number() go to oracle.com/technology/oramag/ nitely doesn’t sort data.
over (order by something unique)rn oracle/06-sep/o56asktom.html. Also, Don’t be misled if the results are not
from your_tables ) for complete information on using ana- the same on your system. It does not
where rn between :n and :m lytic functions, see download.oracle. matter if, when you execute that query,
order by rn; com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/ the results are sorted on your system—it
b14223/analysis.htm#i1007779 (chapter takes only one countercase to demon-
For example, suppose you wanted 21 of the Data Warehousing Guide). In strate that something is not always true.
to paginate through the ALL_OBJECTS my opinion, analytic functions are the Only with an ORDER BY can you make
view, wanted to show 25 rows on a coolest thing to happen to SQL since the any assumptions about the sorted order
page, and needed to show page 5. The SELECT keyword was introduced. of data. Many things—from parallel
query would be query to partitioning, to reverse-key
DOES GROUP BY SORT? indexes, to hash-partitioned indexes, to
SQL> variable n number Does a GROUP BY clause in a query guaran- HASH GROUP BY steps, to the presence
SQL> variable m number tee that the output data will be sorted on the (or lack) of B*tree indexes—can and
SQL> exec :n := 101; :m := 125 GROUP BY columns in order, even if there is no will cause data not to be returned in the
PL/SQL procedure successfully completed. ORDER BY clause? sorted order you anticipated.
Unless and until there is an ORDER If you need data sorted, you have to
SQL> select * BY statement on a query, the rows use an ORDER BY statement; there is no
2 from ( returned cannot be assumed to be in avoiding that. For more of this ORDER
3 select /*+ first_rows(25) */ any order. Without an ORDER BY, the BY discussion, check out asktom.oracle
4 object_id,object_name, data may be returned in any order in .com/~tkyte/OrderBy.html.
O
5 row_number() over which the database feels like returning
6 (order by object_id) rn it. This has always been true and will Tom Kyte has worked for Oracle since 1993. He is a
7 from all_objects) always be true. vice president in the Oracle Public Sector group and
8 where rn between :n and :m In fact, in Oracle Database 10g the author of Expert Oracle Database Architecture:
9 order by rn; Release 2, you’ll see GROUP BY return- 9i and 10g Programming Techniques and Solutions
ing data in a random order much more (Apress, 2005) and Effective Oracle by Design (Oracle
OBJECT_ID OBJECT_NAME RN often than before: Press, 2003), among others.
-------------------------- --------------------------------- -------
102 I_SEQ1 101 SQL> set autotrace on explain
103 I_OBJAUTH1 102 SQL> select job, count(*)
2 from emp
...

124 I_ACCESS1 123 3 group by job ASK Tom

125 I_TRIGGER1 124 4 / Oracle Vice President Tom Kyte answers your most
difficult technology questions. Highlights from that
126 I_TRIGGER2 125 forum appear in this column.
JOB COUNT(*) asktom.oracle.com

25 rows selected. --------------------------- ---------------------- READ more Tom

Expert Oracle Database Architecture: 9i and 10g
CLERK 4 Programming Techniques and Solutions
I chose 25 for the FIRST_ROWS hint SALESMAN 4 amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1590595300/

because that is my page size and PRESIDENT 1 Effective Oracle by Design

amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0072230657/
pagination-style queries should be opti- MANAGER 3
“On ROWNUM and Limiting Results”
mized to get the first page as fast as pos- ANALYST 2 oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/06-sep/
sible. I assign ROW_NUMBER to each o56asktom.html

row after sorting by OBJECT_ID. Then ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tom Kyte Blog

tkyte.blogspot.com
I use a simple BETWEEN to retrieve the | Id | Operation | Name |
DOWNLOAD Oracle Database 10g
specific rows I need (101 through 125 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Express Edition (Oracle Database XE)
in this case). | 0 | SELECT STATEMENT | | oracle.com/technology/xe
You need to order by something | 1 | HASH GROUP BY | | READ more about
unique for these pagination queries, | 2 | TABLE ACCESS FULL| EMP | analytic functions
download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/server.102/
so that ROW_NUMBER is assigned ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- b14223/analysis.htm#i1007779
deterministically to the rows each and
ORDER BY
every time. Otherwise, you end up with The HASH GROUP BY step in the asktom.oracle.com/~tkyte/OrderBy.html
a problem similar to what I pointed explain plan is a newer and generally

66 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF07_AskTom.indd 66 11/17/06 11:37:13 AM

 Oracle PartnerNetwork Certified Advantage Partner Index

CERTIFIEDadvantage partner index

The partners featured in this index have recently reached or renewed their status of Certified Advantage Partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork.
COMPANY NAME URL COMPANY NAME URL
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Acumen Alliance Investments www.acumen.com.au Distrilogie Belgium BVBA www.abcomp.be
ASG (Asia Pacific) Pty Ltd. www.asggroup.com.au DBConcepts Daten - und Informationsverarbeitungsges.m.b.H. www.dbconcepts.at
Application Hosting Services Co., Ltd. www.a-host.co.th DNS Hungary Ltd. www.dns-hungary.hu
Attain IT Pty Ltd. www.attainit.com.au Engineering Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A. www.eng.it
Automated Systems (HK) Ltd. www.asl.com.hk Explorer (UK) Limited www.explorer.uk.com
Beijing Futong Dong Fang Technology Co. Ltd. www.futong.com.cn FORS Development Center www.fdc.ru
China National Software & Service Company Limited www.css.com.cn Fujitsu Services Limited www.uk.fujitsu.com
DataHeaven Co., Ltd. www.dataheaven.co.kr Getronics PinkRoccade www.getronicspinkroccade.nl
Dataone Asia (Thailand) Co. Ltd. www.diasia.co.th Global Services Aarhus & Copenhagen A/S www.maerskdata.dk
Daesang Information Technology Co., Ltd. www.daesangit.com Groupe LGS France www.lgsrecrut.com
Digital China (China) Limited www.digitalchina.com.cn GWI Unternehmensgruppe www.gwi-ag.com
DMS Software Technologies (Pvt.) Ltd. www.dmsswt.com Hunkler GmbH & Co. KG www.hunkler.biz
ECS International Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. www.ecschina.com I-Teco www.i-teco.ru
FPT Information System www.fis.com.vn Inatech Solutions Ltd. www.inatech.com
FPT Software Solutions www.fss.com.vn Industrial and Financial Systems, IFS AB www.ifsworld.com
Fujian Fujitsu Communication Software Co., Ltd. www.ffcs.cn Ineum Consulting www.ineum.fr
Fusion5 Limited www.fusion5.co.nz Infor Global Solutions GmbH www.infor.de
GTL Limited www.gtllimited.com Informacines Technologijos www.it.lt
FPT Corporation www.fpt.com.vn Informatica El Cortes Ingles www.ieci.es
HAND Enterprise Solutions Co., Ltd. www.hand-china.com Information Technologies Company www.it.ru
HPT Vietnam Corporation www.hptvietnam.com Inter Access B.V. www.interaccess.nl
Huadi Computer Co., Ltd. www.huadi.com.cn IT Alise www.it-alise.com
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. www.huawei.com/cn KNAPP Systemintegration GmbH www.knapp.com
iCE Consulting Co Ltd. www.iceconsulting.co.th KPMG Consulting www.kpmg.be
Jigsaw Services Pty Ltd. www.jigsawservices.com.au Kurt Salmon Associates www.kurtsalmon.com
LG CNS Co., Ltd. www.lgcns.com Leaves www.leaves.ru
IT&C Co., Ltd. www.itnc.co.kr LogicaCMG www.logicacmg.nl
KPMG Consulting Co Ltd. www.kpmg.com.tw LOGIX www.logix.fr
Kolon Data Communication Co., Ltd. www.kdc.kolon.co.kr Mdtvision www.mdtvision.com
NCS Pte. Ltd. www.ncs.com.sg Micros-Fidelio GmbH www.micros-fidelio.org
Nucleus Software Exports Ltd. www.nucleussoftware.com Montora www.montora.com
Ora-Tech System Pvt. Ltd. www.ora-tech.com Morse Group www.morse.com
OED Technology Sdn Bhd www.patimas.com Msg Systems ag www.msg-systems.com
Propia Co., Ltd. www.propia.co.kr Network Centric Solutions Limited www.ncsltd.com
Pythis www.pythis.com Noetix www.noetix.com

ORACLE MAGAZINE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 67

JF07_CAPindex.indd 67 11/21/06 3:11:13 PM

 COMPANY NAME URL COMPANY NAME URL
Nokia Corporation www.nokia.com Netix Distribuidores de Tecnologia, C.A. www.netixcorp.com
Oficina de Cooperación Universitaria www.ocu.es Nexsys www.nexsysla.com
OpenPSL www.openpsl.com Officer Distribuidora www.officer.com.br
Open Technologies www.ot.ru Preteco SA www.preteco.com.ar
Opitz Consulting GmbH www.opitz-consulting.de Procwork CRM www.procwork.com.br
Patech Solutions Limited www.patech-solutions.com Recours Informatica Consultoria e Assessoria Ltda www.recours.com.br
PC-Ware Information Technologies AG www.pc-ware.de RedPartner, S.A. www.red-partner.com
PDV-Systeme Erfurt Gesellschaft für Systemtechnik mbH www.pdv.de Servicios, Tecnologia y Organizacion S.A. de C.V. (STO) www.stoconsulting.com
Peak Systems Support Ltd. www.peaksystems.uk.com Sinergy Solutions, S.A. de C.V. www.sinergysolutions.com.mx
Peter-Service www.billing.ru Snoop Consulting S.R.L. www.snoopconsulting.com
Prodatis Consulting AG www.prodatis.com Soft Bolivar S.A. www.softbolivar.com
Professional Computer Services S.A. www.pcs.gr Solusoft www.solusoft.com
QAS Ltd. www.qas.com Soluciones Casee SOCASEE, S.A. www.socasee.com
Quantix Ltd. www.quantix-uk.com Sonda del Peru S.A. www.sonda.com
RDTEX www.rdtex.ru SQL Technology S.A. www.sqltech.cl
RTC Real-Time Center AG www.rtc.ch Sunrising Desenvolvimento de Sistemas www.sunrising.com.br
Satyam Computer Services www.satyam.com Sysdesign Consultoria Em Informatica Limitada www.sysdesign.com.br
S.C. RomSoft S.R.L. www.romsoft.info Tilsor S.A. www.tilsor.com.uy
SCC PLC www.scc.com TSnet S.A. www.tsnetglobal.com
Sddc www.sddc.fr Unimix Tecnologia Ltda www.unimix.com.br
SIV AG www.siv.de YKP Consultoria e Sistemas Ltda. www.ykp.com.br
Service & Systems Solutions www.northgate-is.com Middle East
Softman SA www.softman.pl Bahwan Cybertek LLC www.bahwancybertek.com
Software Design & Management AG www.sdm.de Computer and Communications Systems www. ccs.com.jo
Sogeti Espana www.sogeti.biz Computer Information Systems www.cis.com.lb
Sopra Group www.sopragroup.com Computer and Engineering Bureau CEB www.ceb.com.jo
Sphinx CST www.sphinx.co.uk
Districom www.cis.com.lb
TEAM GmbH www.team-pb.de
Emirates Computers Est www.emiratescomputers.co.ae
Teamsolve www.teamsolve.co.uk
Global Technology Services LLC www.gtsuae.com
Tech Data Midrange GmbH www.tdmidrange.de
Hyperlink www.hyperlink-me.com
Technology Reply Srl www.reply.it
International Turnkey Systems (ITS) www.its.ws
Teta S.A. www.teta.com.pl
Intracom Jordan www.intracom.jo
TietoEnator Corporation www.tetioenator.com
Mannai Trading Company Limited www.mannaicorp.com
TimeStamp - Sistema de Informação www.timestamp.pt
Mercator www.mercator.co.ae
TopS Business Integrator www.topsbi.ru
Macro Software Systems LLC www.macro-soft.com
T-Systems International GmbH www.t-systems.com
Mindscape www.mindscapeit.com
Up to Data, Professional Services GMBH www.uptodata.de
Raya Gulf LLC www.rayaholding.com
Vector Software SRL www.vectorsoftware.ro
Royah www.royah.com
Version 1 Software www.version1.com
United States
Vertis BV www.vertis.nl
170 Systems, Inc. www.170systems.com
Whitehouse Consultants Ltd. www.whitehouse-consult.com
Abaris, Inc. www.abaris-inc.com
WM-data Danmark A/S www.wmdata.com
Agilysys www.agilysys.com
Latin America
Apex IT, Inc. www.apexit.com
Abaco Tecnologia de Informacao Ltda www.abaco.com.br
Applications Software Technology Corp. www.astcorporation.com
Acao Informatica Brasil Ltda www.acao.com.br
Applied Biosystems www.appliedbiosystems.com/sqllims
Advanced Database & IT Sistemas de Informação S.A. www.advancedit.com.br
BMC Software, Inc. www.bmc.com
Asi Consultants www.asiconsutants.com
CedarCrestone www.cedarcrestone.com
Aporte Gestao Empresarial e Tecnologia da Informacao Ltda www.aporte.com
CherryRoad Technologies www.cherryroad.com
Appteck S.A. de C.V. www.appteck.com.mx
CIBER www.ciber.com/ces/oracle
Apply Solutions www.applysolutions.com.br
Compuware Corporation www.compuware.com
Asistir Ltda. www.asistir.com
CSS International www.cssus.com
B2BR Business to Business Informatica do Brasil www.b2br.com.br
Bertini Consultoria em informatica www.bertini.com.br DAZ Systems www.dazsi.com
BGH, S.A. www.bgh.com.ar DLT Solutions, Inc. www.dlt.com
BusinessMind S.A. www.businessmind.com.ec Emerging Solutions www.emergenow.com
Casa de Software S/A www.casasoft.com.br Enterprise Business Solutions, LLC www.theebsgroup.com
Compusoluciones y Asociados, S.A. de C.V. www.compusoluciones.com Hyperion Solutions www.hyperion.com
CFP3 Consultoria e Tecnologia www.commitconsultores.com.br INRANGE Consulting Corporation www.inrangeconsulting.com
Datastar Argentina S.A. www.datastar.com.ar Intermec www.intermec.com
Datum, S.A. (Guatemala) www.datum.com.gt KBACE Technologies, Inc. www.kbace.com
Datum, S.A. de C.V. (El Salvador) www.datum.com.sv Kronos Inc. www.kronos.com
Discover Technology Informatica Ltda www.discover.com.br Lucidity Consulting Group LP www.luciditycg.com
e-Builders & Consulting Group S. A. C. www.ebuilders.com.pe MI Services Group, Inc. www.mi-services.com
E-Partner Comercial e Serviços de Informática Ltda www.epartnerbr.com.br NaviSite, Inc. www.navisite.com
EN-SOF Consultoria e Informática Ltda. www.en-sof.com.br Optimum Solutions Group, LLC www.optimumsolutions.com
ERP Soluciones S.A. de C.V. www.erpsol.com.mx OSI Consulting, Inc www.osius.com
Excelsis S.A.C.I.G www.excelsis.com.py Perot Systems Corporation www.perotsystems.com
Elucid Solutions S.A. www.elucid.com.br Princeton Softech www.princetonsoftech.com
Eserv Expert Services Del Ecuador SA www.eserv-andina.com Protege Software Services, Inc. www.protege.com
FYC Soluciones Integrales, C.A. http://www.fyccorp.com RCM Technologies www.rcmt.com
Grupo Quanam www.quanam.com Solbourne Computer Inc. www.solbourne.com
Illuminat www.illuminatnm.com SYSTIME Computer Corporation www.systime.net
In Motion Servicios S.A. www.inmotion.cl TITAN Technology Partners www.ttpartners.com
Ingenieria Condor S.A. DE C.V. www.i-condor.com TUSC www.tusc.com
Innovat S.A. www.itexperts.com.ec USinternetworking, Inc. www.USi.net
J Evans y Asociados S.A.C. www.jevansa.com.pe Vertex, Inc. www.vertexinc.com
JFM Informática Ltda. www.jfm.com.br Waters Corporation www.waters.com
MATERA Systems Informatica Ltda www.matera.com Wave Consulting Group www.wavecg.com
MOST S.A. www.grupomost.com Whitbread Technology Partners, Inc. www.whitbreadtech.com
MPL Corporate Software SA www.mpl.com.br Xcelicor, Inc. www.xcelicor.com

Partners able to demonstrate superior product knowledge, competence, and a commitment to doing business with Oracle qualify for the Oracle PartnerNetwork Certified Advantage Partner level. These partners receive a higher level
of service, training, benefits, and resources from Oracle to support them in delivering quality to customers. For more information on partners, please visit the Oracle PartnerNetwork Solutions Catalog at solutions.oracle.com.

68 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF07_CAPindex.indd 68 11/21/06 3:11:14 PM

 c o m m e n t IN THE FIELD
Listening to You
IOUG surveys provide guidance for expanding databases and open source software issues.
hom do you listen to? When
you need insight into how
to do your job better or
where the database industry
is headed, what is your best source of
information? Does one particular colum-
nist resonate with you? Is it a company’s
press releases or white papers that make
you go “Hmm”? Is it some coworker or
colleague who has just the right perspec-
tive on the matters that matter?
The Independent Oracle Users Group
(IOUG) conducts quarterly surveys of its
membership on all kinds of issues that
affect your job, your enterprise, and the
industry as a whole. The monthly maga-
zine Database Trends and Applications
and vendors looking for specific infor-
mation sponsor these surveys, but it’s
your opinion that makes them valuable.
These e-mail surveys go out to 20,000
IOUG members worldwide, and what
the membership says is worth listening to.
One recent IOUG survey about
database growth revealed invaluable
information for perspective and plan-
ning purposes. Databases are growing
by 20 to 80 percent per year. Just a few
years ago, a 10GB database was big. Our
survey revealed that 23 percent of enter-
prises now have at least one terabyte-
sized database. These bigger databases
aren’t just found at large enterprises,
although 41 percent of large enterprises
do report at least one terabyte database.
Fully 24 percent of medium enterprises
and 10 percent of small enterprises
also report terabyte databases. Some
enterprises—including heavyweights
like Google, Yahoo!, and Oracle itself—
report petabyte-sized database environ-
ments. (That’s a million gigabytes.)
Such large databases, and the yearly
growth in all databases, present chal-
lenges that we need to handle. Backup
solutions need to become faster—
JF07_InTheField.indd 69
perhaps more selective—if our backup
windows aren’t to exceed operational
windows. Performance issues—how the
application response scales with database
size—must be investigated, clarified, and
solved. Replication to multiple sites—for
high availability, disaster recovery, and
efficient access—becomes problematic
with large and growing databases. The
storage aspect is significant, with tiers of
options—archives, expensive disks, inex-
pensive disks—to consider and select.
Another recent IOUG survey queried
the use of Linux, an open source operat-
ing system with both free and for-pay
versions. Once regarded as a hobbyist
operating system, Linux now has a place
at most enterprises, and its adoption
is increasing. The survey suggests that
in the next year, Linux installations
will increase from 37 to 44 percent of
enterprises in a year; Windows popular-
ity will fall from 60 to 48 percent, and
UNIX will fall from 74 to 67 percent.
The main attraction of Linux is cost
savings: It’s hard to say no to free. “You
get what you pay for” doesn’t seem to
apply to a solid and stable operating
system that many major enterprises
accept. Even the for-pay versions of
Linux are less expensive than the more
widely used commercial operating
systems. Performance and reliability
equal or exceed those of commercial
products, according to many respon-
dents. Clearly Linux is a phenomenon
that we all need to be aware of and to
include in enterprise planning.
In the recent survey, Linux has taken
the lead as the top platform for data-
bases, but Linux is only one example
of open source software that many
enterprises use. A full 66 percent of
respondents reported using open source
software for at least one mission-critical
application. In fact, 9 percent use it for
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY A R I K A P L A N
more than half of their critical apps. And
although price is the irresistible appeal
of open source software, other consider-
ations are important. Maintenance and
support is one of the major concerns:
35 percent of those surveyed see open
source as more difficult than commercial
software to maintain and support.
The rapid adoption of open source
in Oracle environments presents many
challenges, as well as rewards, for enter-
prises. Companies need to plan for
integrating open source solutions and
have firm policies in place. Do the open
source solutions meet company secu-
rity policies? Are current applications
compatible and certified with the open
source technologies? Does staff need to
be retrained for new skills? Will the scal-
ability and performance meet business
requirements? These and other questions
need to be asked before companies can
realize the rewards of cost savings, easier
maintenance, and better performance.
The IOUG surveys will continue
in the year ahead, giving everyone the
opportunity to profit from the valuable
experience and perspective that IOUG
members offer. The IOUG is listening
to DBAs, IT directors, system architects,
application designers, project managers,
CIOs, and presidents like you. O
Ari Kaplan (ari_kaplan@ioug.org) is president of the
Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) and senior
consultant at Datalink. He founded Expand Beyond
Corporation, a leader in mobile IT software. He has been
involved in Oracle technology since 1992.
READ about Oracle on Linux
oracle.com/technologies/linux
DOWNLOAD Oracle Database
10g Release 2
oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/
oracle10g
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 69
11/17/06 11:51:56 AM
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70 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE

JF07_Adindex.indd 70 11/20/06 3:41:34 PM

 c o m m e n t ALL SECURE
Security Goes Mainstream
Security is too important to be left to experts.
t occurs to me as I reflect upon my
14-odd years in security at Oracle
how mainstream security has become
during that time. For example, most
well-known security conferences are now
dominated by businesspeople instead
of security kahunas. I started attending
these conferences when they were small,
furtive gatherings of what could only be
described as the high priests of security:
people who’d invented cryptographic
algorithms (and others who had broken
them), people you’d read about in the New
York Times (the few times security made
it on the front page—or any page), and
people who literally wrote the book on
some arcane aspect of security.
In those days, security was a religion
with a cult following. Few understood its
precepts or could intone them. Security
rituals—like hacking—were restricted to
a few initiates to the high priesthood. All
this sounds great until you realize that if
you want your religion to grow, you need
more true believers. Lots more.
Now, security has gone mainstream
both by happenstance and by design. As
IT has become widespread (for example,
almost everyone has e-mail and almost
everyone now does things online that
they used to do in person or on paper),
computer security mechanisms have
necessarily evolved to take the place of
locked file cabinets in locked offices.
As for those who build the IT systems
that have made the paperless (OK,
“much less paper”) world possible, secu-
rity ought to—indeed, must—become
mainstream instead of an afterthought.
At Oracle, security has evolved from
being largely centralized (through a
small group of security mavens) to being
decentralized: all development groups
have security points of contact; all devel-
opers are trained on security. My goal
for security is not to build another high
JF06_Security.indd 71
priesthood but to “spread the security
gospel” so all developers become true
believers. In a way, security is just too
important to be left to experts.
A recent example of how security
has gone mainstream at Oracle is the
work that my team and others did before
Oracle Database 10g Express Edition
(Oracle Database XE) shipped. Oracle
Database XE is a lightweight, stripped-
down version of Oracle Database that is
intended to be used as an embedded data-
base—it just ships inside another product
and you don’t really even know it is
there. Many products have embedded
databases that you wouldn’t expect, such
as physical security systems (for example,
card readers) used for building access.
While we didn’t make a big deal about
it in terms of patting ourselves on the
back (nor do I think vendors should take
big bows for exercising due security care
on behalf of their customers), we put a lot
of security work into Oracle Database XE.
We ensured that critical security issues
were fixed, Oracle’s ethical hacking team
took a crack at it, and we did a lot of
work to lock the product down so that it
installs in a “default secure” configuration.
Some may wonder why we put
the extra effort into hardening Oracle
Database XE. After all, it is not necessar-
ily going to be a big moneymaker; it’s not
the Oracle enterprise database protect-
ing the corporate crown jewels. Why, in
short, go to the extra security effort?
The answer is, we hardened Oracle
Database XE for all the “security is main-
stream” ideas I outlined earlier. Because
Oracle Database XE is an embedded
database, it’s not likely that a professional,
security-trained DBA will administer it.
It’s very likely to be used in a Web-facing
application, which is another reason you
want it hardened out of the box.
Also, we took a lesson from history.
ORACLE MAGAZINE
BY M A RY A N N DAVI DSO N
One of the reasons the SQL Slammer
worm spread so quickly several years ago
was because of all the embedded SQL
Server databases that many enterprises
did not know they had and, thus, did
not know to patch. Remember those card
systems I talked about? A number of them
failed when SQL Slammer wormed its
way through their embedded databases.
If, someday, there are thousands of
Oracle Database XE databases embed-
ded in applications, we want them to be
as secure as we can make them precisely
because this is a “mainstreamed” database
application and not administered by the
high priests of the temple of security. I’m
pleased that we hardened Oracle Database
XE and even more pleased that multiple
people lined up behind the effort. It was
not a hard sell, and that, too, is a main-
stream idea. Security isn’t just for enter-
prise databases but for all IT products.
This leads me to the very last reason
but really the first reason why we did
what we did for Oracle Database XE:
Oracle’s name is on it, and security is
part of everything we do. O
Mary Ann Davidson is the chief security officer at
Oracle, responsible for secure development practice and
security evaluations and assessments. She represents
Oracle on the board of directors of the Information
Technology Information Security Analysis Center and the
Defense Science Board and is on the editorial review
board of SC Magazine.
READ more about security
oracle.com/security/security-solutions.html
READ more Davidson
blogs.oracle.com/maryanndavidson
DOWNLOAD
Oracle Database 10g Express Edition
(Oracle Database XE)
oracle.com/technology/products/database/xe
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 71
11/17/06 12:04:07 PM
 c o m m e n t ANALYST’S CORNER
The Right Stuff
Small businesses can compete on a big scale if they have enterprise-caliber software.
onald Feinberg is a vice presi-
dent and distinguished analyst
at Gartner. He talked to Oracle
Magazine about how the busi-
ness world is changing for small and
medium businesses (SMBs) and how
technology vendors such as Oracle are
responding to these changes.
Oracle Magazine: SMBs are adopting
increasingly complex IT environments
to keep up with business demands.
What issues do SMBs face today, and
why have these resulted in enterprise-
level software deployments?
Feinberg: It’s important to establish why
so many small companies are interested
in enterprise-class software. Take the
manufacturing industry as an example.
Until recently, small companies in this
sector mainly catered to local markets
or specialized niches because they
didn’t have the resources to reach much
further. Now even small shops can
compete with big companies because
they can connect and exchange infor-
mation online. However, if they can’t
participate in the supply chain, they
can’t sell to the big guys, and that’s why
they need enterprise-caliber software.
We’re seeing this trend in many other
industries, not just manufacturing—
anywhere where the business world is
dominated by SMBs. These companies
need high-end software capabilities to
service a worldwide market.
Oracle Magazine: How are today’s data-
base products addressing ease of admin-
istration, tuning, and upgrade?
Feinberg: These software products are
improving in several ways, from fast
installation to automated storage man-
agement to push-button data recovery.
Essentially, vendors such as Oracle are
making the databases simpler to use
and more self-managing, so they will
work right out of the box. A self-
72 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2007 ORACLE.COM/ORACLEMAGAZINE
JF07_Analyst.indd 72
managing database is particularly attrac-
tive to SMBs because they don’t have
to hire a battery of technical people or
pay a systems integrator to set it up
and take care of it for them. This was
not the primary reason for automating
today’s database management systems,
but it’s certainly one of the side effects
that have benefited SMBs.
Oracle Magazine: What level of security
do the entry-level database editions like
Oracle Database 10g Standard Edition
One provide?
Feinberg: Oracle provides the same secu-
rity model in all of its database editions.
Of course, you still have to set up the
security. Many SMBs hire a systems inte-
grator or professional services organiza-
tion to help. There are lots of boutique
companies that specialize in install-
ing software applications, developing
data warehouses, configuring identity
management systems, and even selling
remote DBA services over the internet.
Oracle Magazine: What compatibility
challenges do SMBs face in upgrading
their databases to enterprise editions?
Feinberg: There isn’t any upward-
compatibility problem at all. The only
problem is money, since the higher-end
editions are more expensive to pur-
chase, implement, and maintain. One
way to get around that is to avoid cus-
tomization. SMBs usually end up modi-
fying their business processes more than
modifying their software, which makes
it easier to upgrade to a larger edition.
Oracle Magazine: Do the requirements of
SMBs for database software also apply
to application software?
Feinberg: The reasoning is the same:
SMBs don’t want to hire specialists to
deploy and maintain their application
environments. They want to manage
their businesses. This gives them two
basic choices: Either they can go to
BY DAVI D BAUM
a small application vendor and buy
a complete software package, or they
can subscribe to an on-demand version
from an enterprise software vendor.
This second option is becoming more
and more popular. Today’s SMBs can
outsource just about everything, from
computers and physical infrastructure
to communications devices, phone
systems, and all types of software. That
is an appealing prospect to a lot of
small companies.
Oracle Magazine: What requirements
top the wish lists of SMBs looking for
simple, turnkey database software?
Feinberg: Most SMBs don’t have large IT
budgets or a great deal of expertise in
their IT departments. Thus they tend
to favor proven solutions that are easy
to install and configure. That said, they
still want top-end performance, avail-
ability, security, and reliability—all at
a comparatively low cost. This leaves
them with a couple of choices. Either
they can buy database software espe-
cially geared toward SMB shops, or they
can purchase an entry-level edition from
one of the enterprise database manage-
ment systems vendors, such as Oracle
Database 10g Standard Edition One. O
David Baum (david@dbaumcomm.com) is a freelance
business writer based in Santa Barbara, California.
Founded in 1979, Gartner (www.gartner.com)
researches, analyzes, and reports on vendors,
technologies, and business processes in the
IT industry.
DISCOVER resources for SMBs
oracle.com/technology/smb
READ about Unbreakable Linux
oracle.com/technologies/linux
oracle.com/technology/tech/linux
11/17/06 11:40:02 AM
 Servers

Storage

Systems Management

Services

Software

How Dell Does IT

Dell™ understands that mission critical databases require powerful performance, highly reliable and available
hardware platforms, and scalability that allows you to grow with your database needs. Dell understands
this so well we run our own supply chain management system, which supports hundreds of suppliers and
manages nearly a billion parts per year, on powerful and scalable Dell PowerEdge™ servers running Oracle®
Database 10g. Dell offers pre-engineered, tested, and validated solutions for Oracle Database 10g on Linux®
and Windows®. The entire solution stack is tested and supported by Dell – the servers, storage, switches,
and software, including the Oracle Database software and the operating system – and Dell offers services
to help you accelerate deployment.

Go to dell.com/oraclemag to get the full story on how Dell IT uses Oracle

Database 10g in our supply chain management system.
Dell cannot be responsible for errors in typography or photography. Dell and the Dell logo are trademarks of Dell Inc. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle
Corporation. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims any
proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. © 2006 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of Dell is strictly forbidden. August 2006.
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