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    Microsoft profits way up

    Microsoft Corp. posted a big increase in quarterly profits, thanks to its traditional software programs, but the company's online search business isn't keeping pace financially with its main rivals in the booming Internet advertising industry....
    Friday, October 28, 2005 (SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER)

    Researchers: Oracle Passwords Crack in Mere Minutes

    Attackers can easily crack even strong Oracle database passwords and gain access to critical enterprise data because of weak password protection mechanisms, researchers have warned.

    Celebrity Interviews Get Googled

    The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Foundation now lets you Google its trove of celebrity interviews.

    Oracle Adds PeopleSoft Supply Chain Integration to APS Suite

    The updates to Oracle's Advanced Planning and Scheduling software seek to better address manufacturers by allowing users to model their extended supply chain using "what if" scenarios.

    MySQL 5 Arrives

    After more than three years, the long-awaited open-source DBMS MySQL 5 has finally arrived, bringing ANSI SQL features.

    International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration

    • The International Nucleotide Sequence Databases (INSD) have been developed and maintained collaboratively between DDBJ , EMBL , and GenBank for over 18 years.
    • The INSDC advisory board, the International Advisory Committee , is made up of members of each of the databases' advisory bodies. At their most recent meeting, members of this committee unanimously endorsed and reaffirmed the existing data-sharing policy of the three databases that make up the INSDC, which is stated below.
    • Individuals submitting data to the international sequence databases should be aware of INSDC policy .

    More read -->eweek.com

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    Oracle To Offer Free Database


    Oracle intends to release a free version of its database, a reaction to the growing competitive pressure from low-end open-source databases.

    The database heavyweight on Tuesday is expected to announce the beta release of Oracle 10g Express Edition (Oracle Database XE), which will be generally available by the end of the year. It is targeted at students, small organizations and software vendors that could embed the Oracle database with an application.

    The latest edition is the same as other databases in Oracle's lineup but is limited in usage. It can only run servers with one processor, with 4GB of disk memory and 1GB of memory.

    The new low-end edition is aimed squarely at free and open-source alternatives to Oracle's namesake database, said Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president of Oracle's server technologies division.

    Open-source databases have caught on steadily in popularity over the past few years with corporate customers and Web developers.

    MySQL is the most popular open-source database among developers, according to a recent Evans Data study. IBM earlier this month released a free version of its own DB2 database as part of a PHP development package. And Microsoft intends to ship a free version of SQL Server 2005, called Express, next month.

    "There is definitely a market there (for low-end databases) and a demand. And we want them to be using Oracle and not MySQL or SQL Server Express," Mendelsohn said. "It's definitely a reaction to the market interest."

    About a year and a half ago, Oracle introduced Oracle 10g Standard Edition One, a version aimed at mid-size companies where Microsoft has many customers. That database is limited to two processors and cost $149 per user.

    By introducing a free entry-level product, Oracle intends to get more developers and students familiar with its namesake database, Mendelsohn said. Those customers, Oracle hopes, will eventually upgrade to a higher-end version.

    "Even though the database is initially free, standards progress and those university students who are playing with the database today will eventually be working at corporations and making product decisions," he said. "We want to have mind-share with those people."

    The Express Edition database can be distributed with other products. It will be available through Oracle's developer network and include a Web-based administration console development tools.

    Separately, Mendelsohn offered comments on what Oracle intends to do with InnoDB, a storage engine for the MySQL database that Oracle acquired earlier this month.

    He said Oracle intends to extend a contract with MySQL where the InnoDB storage engine is packaged with MySQL.

    "There are all kinds of possibilities we're exploring," Mendelsohn said. "You might seeing it showing up in Oracle products."

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    Oracle password system comes under fire

    Attackers could easily uncover Oracle database users' passwords because of a weak protection mechanism, putting corporate data at risk of exposure, experts have warned.

    In the latest critique of Oracle's security practices, experts are calling on the software maker to improve the mechanism used to secure passwords for database users. Researchers say they have found a way to recover the plain text password from even very strong, well-written Oracle database passwords within minutes.

    The technique Oracle uses to store and encrypt user passwords doesn't provide sufficient security, said Joshua Wright of the SANS Institute and Carlos Sid of Royal Holloway college, University of London. Wright gave a presentation on the matter Wednesday at the SANS Network Security conference in Los Angeles.

    In the presentation, Wright discussed how passwords are encrypted before being stored in Oracle databases and presented a tool he wrote to uncover passwords, according to a SANS statement. A paper by Wright and Cid is available on the SANS Web site. (Download PDF.)

    Wright and Cid identified several vulnerabilities, including a weak hashing mechanism and a lack of case preservation--all passwords are converted to uppercase characters before calculating the hash.

    "By exploiting these weaknesses, an adversary with limited resources can mount an attack that would reveal the plain text password from the hash for a known user," Wright and Cid wrote in their paper.

    The researchers informed Oracle about their findings in July, but subsequent requests for a response from Oracle have gone unanswered, according to SANS. Oracle also did not respond to a request for comment from CNET News.com.

    Oracle users can protect their systems by requiring strong passwords and assigning limited user rights, the researchers said. Users are also encouraged to tell Oracle that it should improve password protection, they wrote.

    Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle is increasingly coming under fire for its security practices. Security researchers have taken the company to task for being slow in fixing security vulnerabilities and providing faulty patches when it does update its software.

    Main features:
    • Modular architecture: any number of modules can be loaded to monitor any sort of data (system, database (MySQL), network, hardware, ...)
    • User friendly graphical interface with full drag'n'drop functionality and complete context sensitive help
    • Powerful threshold functionality: no limits on the number of thresholds, email alerts with screenshots and multiple SMTP servers, user defined scripts, importance level compatible with the UNIX syslog facility
    • Dashboards can be constructed from any number of modules, with graphical viewers (graphs, bar charts, pies, ...) and thresholds easily created by drag'n'drop, all saved in a loadable file
    • Distributed monitoring, whereas moodss GUI or moodss daemon can act as a server or client for exported data
    • Specific modules can easily be developed using a scripting language (Tcl, Perl or Python) or in C
    • Saved dashboards are fully compatible with the associated moomps daemon for background monitoring
    • Any number of data cells history over time can be recorded, in a SQL database, so that, for example, graphs and presentations can be made with the help of common spreadsheet software
    • Tables of formulas, with mathematical expressions made from data cells coming from any modules, even other formulas tables
    • The moodss GUI can then be used to browse the database as conveniently (drag'n'drop, viewers, ...) as in real-time mode
    • Multiple platforms support: all UNIX, Linux, BSD based machines, Windows (not all functions available)
    Free database system:
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    The World's Largest Commercial Database Runs Oracle

    Only Oracle Database produces leading results on Linux, UNIX, and Windows
    Oracle is the leading database for decision support (DSS) and online transaction processing (OLTP) in real-world customer environments, according to the Winter Corporation 2005 TopTen Program survey.

    The survey, which identifies the world's largest and most heavily used databases, found that the largest commercial data warehouse in the world runs a 100 terabyte (TB) Oracle Database. That's more than triple the size of the largest database in the previous TopTen Program survey, which was also powered by Oracle.

    The survey's newest category covering Linux DSS and OLTP databases was completely dominated by Oracle customers. Overall, the survey found that Oracle is the only database vendor whose customers posted top results on Linux, UNIX, and Windows platforms. Other databaseb internetsurvey findings included:

    • The world's largest commercial database runs Oracle Database, with 100TB of data.
    • The world's largest commercial data warehouse runs Oracle Database.
    • The world's largest commercial UNIX data warehouse runs Oracle Database.
    • The world's largest commercial Linux data warehouse runs Oracle Database.
    • The world's largest scientific database runs Oracle Database.
    • Oracle Database powers nine of the world's top 10 UNIX OLTP systems.
    • Oracle Database powers 100 percent of all Linux DSS and OLTP measured in the Winter Corporation 2005 TopTen program.
    • Oracle customers represent 58 percent of the all validated participants in the Winter Corporation 2005 TopTen program.

    The Winter Corporation 2005 TopTen Program surveyed customers from 20 countries on five continents, in 11 industries from government to healthcare to retail to telecommunications, among others. The Program identifies the world's leading database implementations based on Database Size and Most Rows/Records. As part of the rigorous survey process, respondents must have a validated database size that meets the survey's requirements.More about visitoracle.com.

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    Developers get latest Microsoft database, tools

    Microsoft released long-awaited updates to its database and programming tools to developers on Thursday and revealed a plan to lure new database customers.

    The company said that its SQL Server 2005 database and Visual Studio 2005 tools are available to subscribers of its Microsoft Developer Network. Those two products were also released to manufacturing on Thursday and will be generally available by November 7 after a number of delays.

    In addition, Microsoft on Thursday detailed a limited-time "migration pricing" program meant to attract customers of competitive databases.

    For customers of Oracle, Sybase, and IBM's DB2 and Informix database, Microsoft will give a 50 percent discount on a SQL Server Enterprise Edition license with the purchase of a regularly priced Software Assurance License. The promotion begins Dec. 1.

    Microsoft intends to host an event in San Francisco to launch its latest database and development tools and tout BizTalk 2006, its integration server software update, which is due in the first quarter of 2006. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is scheduled to speak.

    At the event, Microsoft will showcase how customers are using its server products to build business applications and it will highlight different partners, including both software companies that build add-ons as well as hardware manufacturers, according to the company.

    Executives will emphasize how its server products, including Windows Server 2003, are designed to work well together and comprise an attractive "platform" for building applications, Steven Guggenheimer, general manager of application platform marketing and development at Microsoft, told CNET News.com on Thursday.

    The company will reveal benchmarks to demonstrate how SQL Server can be used for high-end computing jobs, and they will also highlight the company's low-end Express offerings, which are aimed at students, hobbyists and individual developers, Guggenheimer said.

    Microsoft plans to release a slew of new products over the next 12 to 18 months, including Windows Vista, the first major update of its client operating system in five years, and a new release of Office.

    The First Database Designed for Grid Computing

    With Oracle Database 10g, the first relational database designed for Grid Computing, your information is always available and secure. Oracle Database 10g lowers the cost of ownership through automated management while providing the highest possible quality of service. And with Release 2, Oracle builds on Release 1's foundation to further improve efficiencies and reduce the cost of information management. Oracle is the best choice for large enterprises, small and midsize businesses, and departments alike.

    Availability and Scalability with Grid Computing

    Oracle Database 10g delivers the response times your users demand and reduces your cost of downtime. And only Oracle offers non-stop availability, scalability, and low-cost clustering with Oracle Real Application Clusters, the foundation for Grid Computing.

    Industry-Leading Security

    Oracle Database 10g has unique security features that address requirements in the areas of privacy, regulatory compliance, and data consolidation, including row-level security, fine grained auditing, and transparent data encryption.

    Lower Costs with the Self-Managing Database

    Oracle automates time-consuming, error-prone administrative tasks, so DBAs can focus on strategic business objectives. Studies from the Edison Group prove Oracle Database 10g offers superior manageability and significant cost savings over IBM DB2 8.2 as well as Microsoft SQL Server 2000.

    Oracle Grid Computing

    Runs faster. Costs less. And never breaks.

    For 40 years the mainframe has been the leader in computer performance and reliability. But now there's the Oracle Grid. A group of low-cost servers connected by Oracle software. The Oracle Grid runs applications faster than the fastest mainframe. And if a server fails, the mainframe stops while the Oracle Grid just keeps running.

    You can adopt Oracle Grid technologies with minimal investment, zero disruption, and fast ROI, starting with three steps:

    1. Standardize on low-cost, modular servers and storage
    2. Consolidate servers and storage with Oracle Database and Real Application Clusters
    3. Automate day-to-day management tasks with Oracle Enterprise Manager

    Election Reform Commission Urges Secure E-voting

    EFF Applauds Commission Recommendations But Opposes National ID Card Endorsement

    Washington, DC - The Carter-Baker Commission, formally known as the Commission on Federal Election Reform, released on Monday an extensive report about the country's electoral health, along with a wide range of suggested reforms. Most of the Commission's recommendations should cheer those concerned about the security of electronic voting.

    Named after the co-chairs, Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker III, the Carter-Baker Commission reported that there is an urgent need for the nation to increase transparency in voting processes and to institute robust security measures. It found that the lack of transparency and robust security is undermining public confidence that votes are being accurately recorded.

    Among other recommendations, the Commission suggested:

    * All voting machines should be equipped with a voter-verifiable paper audit trail and be fully accessible to voters with disabilities.

    * Election officials should publicly test all voting equipment before, during, and after Election Day.

    * Election officials should permit public observation of the machine certification process.

    * Voting machine manufacturers that are unwilling to submit their machines' computer code for Election Assistance Commission testing and review by independent experts should be prohibited from selling their voting machines.

    * Election officials should verify upon delivery of a voting machine that the system matches the system that was certified.

    "The Commission joins a growing chorus of concerned groups and citizens urging that electronic voting technology and related procedures electron databasebe overhauled," said Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Staff Attorney Matt Zimmerman. "This high-level, bipartisan panel confirmed that e-voting has introduced an unacceptable amount of uncertainty into voting, which should be the most trusted task performed by government. Congress and the states need to move quickly to ensure that another election doesn't go by with the same systemic flaws. Luckily, on the federal level, HR 550 could help us reach some of those goals by mandating a voter-verified paper trail and mandatory audits."

    Zimmerman noted that while most of the Commission's recommendations were on-the-mark, others -- such as permitting states to decide for themselves whether paper or electronic ballots would rule in the event of disparities -- didn't go far enough.

    EFF strongly opposes the Commission's privacy-invasive recommendations regarding voter identification, however. The report suggests that voters should be required to present the National ID card mandated by the recently passed Real ID Act at the voting booth.

    "Tying voter ID requirements to the REAL ID Act is bad for voting and for privacy," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Lee Tien. "There's scant evidence that inadequate voter ID is a factor in election fraud. And the Commission admits to concerns that voter ID requirements could disenfranchise eligible voters, adversely affect minorities, or be used to monitor voting behaviors are 'serious and legitimate.' Moreover, the REAL ID Act turns drivers' licenses into de facto national IDs by forcing states to link their DMV databases so that drivers' personal data will instantly be available to a wide range of state, local, and federal officials. Once created, history has shown that law enforcement, employers, landlords, credit agencies, mortgage brokers, and direct mailers will find a way to access, and in all likelihood abuse, those databases."

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    Building a Stored Procedure Generator

    Creating basic data access stored procedures is time consuming and boring work. Relieve the tedium by writing code that writes these stored procedures for you.

    We all know that the most efficient way to access data from a database is to use stored procedures. For most applications, these stored procedures follow the same basic design whereby you list every field that you need to retrieve or save. For large tables or a large number of tables, writing these stored procedures can be very cumbersome and prone to typographical errors.

    This article demonstrates how you can build your own stored procedure generator. You can then modify and enhance this stored procedure generator to tailor the results to your stored procedure style.

    Define Your Stored Procedure Structure
    Stored procedures that perform complex and unique operations are best done manually. But most stored procedures perform basic database operations such as retrieve, insert, update, and delete. Often, these operations are accomplished with stored procedures that look identical except for the actual table and field names. These types of stored procedures are prime candidates for a stored procedure generator.

    A stored procedure generator is basically an application that, when run, creates a stored procedure script. You can then save the script within a Database project and run it against your database to create the stored procedure. Details on using Database projects are provided later in this article. See the sidebar More On Stored Procedures for useful links to background information on stored procedures.

    The first step in building a stored procedure generator is to define the basic structure for your most common types of stored procedures.

    Let's use the Customers table from the Northwind database as an example. A script that defines a stored procedure to retrieve all the fields databasewithin a table given a unique ID might look like this:

    CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.CustomersRetrieveByID_sp
    @CustomerID nchar(5)
    AS
    SELECT
    CustomerID, CompanyName, ContactName,
    ContactTitle, Address, City, Region, PostalCode,
    Country, Phone, Fax
    FROM Customers
    WHERE CustomerID = @CustomerID

    This example uses a five-character string for the primary key, but best practices often dictate using a unique, meaningless, numeric key (such as that defined with an identity column in SQL Server). If your tables use a numeric key, just change the data type of the stored procedure parameter.

    Another common data-retrieval stored procedure collects all the key values for all the rows in the table. You can bind the result of this stored procedure to a drop down list or other user-interface element for user selection. For example, to define a stored procedure that returns a list of key fields for all customers, your stored procedure script might look like this:

    CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.CustomersRetrieveList_sp
    AS
    SELECT CustomerID, CompanyName, ContactName,
    ContactTitle, Address
    FROM Customers
    WITH (NOLOCK)

    This case requires no parameter because it retrieves all the rows and includes them in the list. If instead of deleting rows you add a status field to your table to mark rows as active or deleted, then you will need to add a WHERE clause to retrieve only those rows that have an active status.

    This article contains the code to generate both of these common types of "retrieve" stored procedures. You may want to add more types, such as insert, update, and delete stored procedures. If so, you should also define the structure for those types of procedures. Common practice is to create one stored procedure that supports insert, update, and delete operations, passing in the ADO RowState value as a parameter that determines which operation to perform.

    Use Stored Procedures for Java Persistence

    Find out why you should use stored procedures to build your Java persistence layer instead of embedded SQL, entity beans, or tools such as Hibernate. Then learn how to do it.

    Typically, those not familiar enough with SQL will choose CMP entity beans or frameworks such as TopLink and Hibernate, which generate queries and help to isolate them from the Java code. Regardless of which you choose, the resulting code will still contain Java-based queries. This article advises against this approach and proposes an alternative form of persistence that uses database stored procedures.
    Using stored procedures to encapsulate data manipulation helps to solve the following problems often found when this logic—the associated queries—exists within the Java layer:

    • Client/server data shuttling: When queries are made from Java code, potentially large amounts of data are shuttled back and forth between the application server and the database. This can greatly impact performance.
    • Transactions opened from outside the database: A transaction is often created for each query executed from the Java code within an application server. When a single logical operation requires multiple queries, many individual transactions may be created.
    • Tight coupling of database schema and Java code: The database structure is exposed to the Java layer. Hence, future changes to database structure may require changes to the Java code. As with Java class structure and member data, the database structure should be abstracted from other layers in the software.
    • Software release coordination: Because the Java code depends on the database structure, database releases that contain schema changes must be coordinated with releases of the dependant Java code. It's often difficult to coordinate such releases. Furthermore, if one system must be rolled-back due to a problem, dependant systems must be rolled back also.

    The Proposed Solution

    The use of stored procedures helps to solve the problems listed above. For operations that require the lookup and/or update of data across multiple tables, the resulting queries are placed in a stored procedure that encapsulates the details. The advantage of this design is that it places the data-related business logic (the knowledge of where data resides, and how to manipulate it) where it belongs: in the database. The design goal for every application should be to place as much of the business logic into the database layer as stored procedures and limit the amount of Java code in use (see Figure 1). The proposed architecture moves the business logic further into the center of the diagram, out of the Java layer, and into the database layer.

    As a Java developer, this architecture may alarm you as it appears to reduce your development role. In my experience, three reasons explain why this is not the case:

    Many Java developers write their own queries anyway, and this architecture simply moves them into stored procedures.
    You'll always have more work to do in the Java layer than time and resources allow. Handing off the SQL work to a database team takes pressure off the Java developer.
    The gain in performance and scalability this architecture brings helps reduce the likelihood that a project will fail.
    Let's explore in more detail why this architecture is better.devx.com

    A Tale of Two Quarters – The News in Oracle’s Numbers

    Oracle’s financial results for both its fiscal fourth quarter (which ended May 31st) and the first quarter of its fiscal new year indicate that the Oracle applications acquisition strategy appears to be paying off.

    First of all, Oracle’s fiscal 2005 fourth quarter revenue came in at $3.88 billion, a jump of 26 percent over the same quarter of the previous year. These results seem to have been driven by its Peoplesoft acquisition because sales of new applications licenses were particularly robust, growing 52 percent to $350 million. Of course, Oracle would not break out its application revenue so it is not possible to say which applications (Peoplesoft applications or “legacy” Oracle applications) were driving the growth.

    Total software revenue increased by 24 percent over the same quarter a year ago (to $3.1 billion). New license revenue grew 23 percent to $1.6 billion and license updates and product support revenue grew 26 percent to $1.5 billion. Revenue from services revenue grew 35 percent to $755 million.

    Focusing in on the database, new license revenue for database and middleware increased by 16 percent. Oracle indicated that its database business was driven by optional add-ons such as RAC (Real Application Clusters), which grew 27 percent from a year ago.

    Oracle also modified its guidance for the upcoming quarter, indicating that it expects total revenues to grow in the range of 32 percent to 34 percent to $2.9 billion. Furthermore, Oracle was aiming for 20 percent earnings increases over the next 5 years.

    Then, late in September of this quarter Oracle unveiled its 2006 first quarter financial results. Earnings for the quarter were 10 cents per share, or $519 million, on revenues of $2.77 billion. These results were 25 percent better than the $2.22 billion posted a year earlier for the same quarter (clearly not within the 32 to 34 percent). Oracle's sales of business application licenses totaled $127 million, an 84 percent increase from the same time last year (again, a nice, big jump).

    Indeed, all was not rosy in these numbers. Database revenue was somewhat stagnant coming in at $502 million, not even 2 percent higher than last year’s $494 million. Of course, Oracle downplayed the impact of these numbers indicating that last year sales of new Oracle database licenses grew 19 percent, so the number it was trying to beat was uncharacteristically high.

    It is also important to note that the upgrade business was healthy for Oracle – and that is important because Oracle makes more money on upgrades these days than on new license sales. Upgrades for database software were up 13 percent over last year at $1.06 billion, and databae telapplications upgrades more than doubled from $238 million last year to $580 million this year.

    So, applications are growing – predominantly, it would seem, by acquisition. And database sales are slowing, at least somewhat. It will be interesting to see how this balancing act plays out over the next couple of quarters as Oracle continues to focus more on applications and its fusion project. Will it neglect its core database business?

    More Oracle News

    And in the on-going executive turnstiles at Oracle, Greg Maffei was appointed as CFO, and one of three co-presidents. Maffei was CFO at Microsoft from 1997 to 2000, and recently had served as the chairman and CEO of 360networks, a provider of broadband communications services.

    The other co-presidents at Oracle are Safra Catz and Charles Phillips. Catz, who had been serving as interim CFO since the departure of Harry You, relinquished CFO responsibilities after Oracle announced its fiscal fourth quarter earnings.

    Speculation ran rampant in the press that the hiring of Maffei was a reaction to Oracle losing ground to Microsoft on the Windows platform for its database. I doubt that there was any real connection between the two, though. Maffei is simply a good choice for CFO with a solid resume and background in technology and finance.

    Oracle also added Tod Nielsen to its marketing group. Nielsen formerly worked at BEA Systems, CrossGain, and Microsoft, as well. Maybe Oracle is targeting former Microsoft execs after all?

    Oracle also hired Omar Tazi into a position called Chief Open Source Evangelist. Oracle hired Tazi away from Orbeon, and XML infrastructure company, where he was CEO. This hiring raises the question of just what, exactly, and open source evangelist will do – and what impact the position might have on the bottom line of Oracle. At any rate, it clearly indicates Oracle’s intent to participate very actively in the open source world – hopefully it means Oracle will contribute more to the open source community.

    On the technology side of things, Oracle released R2 of its database 10g software into general availability. As discussed last quarter, most of the new features of this release involve providing better management capabilities. But there are some performance goodies (better sorting techniques and the Automatic Workload Repository for performance troubleshooting), security improvements (new types of data encryption), features to ease development on the Windows platform, and improved XML support.

    Also on the technology front, in early August Oracle bought the rights to Context Media, Inc., a content integration provider. This acquisition can help Oracle to catch up in the content management space that IBM currently leads (at least in terms of DBMS providers).

    On the pricing front, Oracle succumbed to industry pressure on multicore licensing. According to terms on the Oracle Store web site, fordatabse phone the purposes of counting how many processors need to be licensed, a multicore chip with "n" cores will be multiplied by 0.75. Oracle will then round up fractions to the next whole number. Basically, Oracle is giving in a bit and not forcing a one-to-one relationship and forcing you to pay full price for each core. So, a multicore chip with 14 cores would be priced as if it were 11 processors (14 x 0.75 = 10.5, round up to 11). The revised wording seems to be a response to competitors that had previously explicitly clarified their position on the matter (e.g. Microsoft and IBM).

    And IBM Fixes a Flaw

    Early in the quarter IBM corrected a security flaw in DB2 UDB for Linux, Unix, and Windows platforms. The exposure enabled users who already had access to the database to elevate their privileges. It was found in versions 8.1.4 through 8.2.2.

    The vulnerability was in DB2 UDB Enterprise Server Edition, DB2 UDB Workgroup Server (all Editions), DB2 UDB Express Server (all Editions) and DB2 UDB Personal Edition.

    The Sun Shines on the Database

    Early this quarter Sun Microsystems, a vendor not often mentioned in this quarterly report, announced its intention to seek an open-source DBMS solution for its Java Enterprise System and OpenSolaris offerings. Basically, Sun indicated that it will look to incorporate open source DBMS technology into these offerings.

    This is yet another feather in the on-going open source crusade that has exploded in the DBMS market. Of course, John Loiacono, Sun Microsystems Inc.'s executive vice president for software, did not rule out the possibility that Sun could develop its own open-source database solution at some future point-in-time. However, he also noted that Sun is not going to create a large-scale transactional DBMS to compete against IBM, Microsoft and Oracle.

    In Other Open Source Database News

    In early August at the Linux World conference, Novell and Dell announced plans to resell MySQL services. These are two of the higher profile companies that have signed on to sell subscription based services for MySQL. Basically, the services amount to certified software updates, technical support and indemnification for enterprise customers using the MySQL database. Three three levels of service (silver, gold and platinum) are available with costs ranging from $595 to $5,000 per year.

    Sybase Upgrades its DBMS

    Finally, Sybase released an upgrade of its Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) DBMS in mid September. Although it has lagged the big three (Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft) in market share, Sybase still maintains the number four position in the market. The new version of ASE, version 15, adds features to support encryption and improved XML support data, as well as performance improvements.

    Summary

    And so ends another quarterly examination of the atabase management market. Thanks for reading… and be sure to tune in again next quarter when we look at the fourth and final quarter of 2005.

    -->Read more

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