Welcome to 5 Minute Briefing: Oracle an information resource prepared by Database Trends and Applications Magazine and published in cooperation with the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG). To subscribe, click here.

DbProtect Supports Oracle 11g on Windows

Application Security, Inc., a provider of database security solutions, has announced DbProtect, which the company says is the first database security suite to provide support for Oracle Database 11g available on the Windows platform. With this release, DbProtect will accurately discover 11g instances and test their configuration to ensure secure settings upon deployment and beyond. As a result, organizations can include Oracle 11g instances in their broader database security assessments, ensuring that as they are deployed they comply with the organization’s broader security and compliance standards.

“AppSec offers the industry’s most comprehensive database security suite to support Oracle and other databases.  Securing a company’s most sensitive data is critical to the livelihood of any business,” Ted Julian, vice president of marketing and strategy, Application Security, told 5 Minute Briefing. “The number-one thing organizations can do to guarantee a secure and compliant Oracle 11g deployment is to ensure that new instances are deployed with the appropriate settings. But linking 11g deployments in this respect with the hundreds or even thousands of other databases at a typical enterprise can be frighteningly complex for even the most sophisticated organization. DbProtect makes it easy for enterprises to maintain a consistent security and compliance posture across their database infrastructure despite new platforms, applications, updates, and other changes.”

Combining database discovery, vulnerability scanning, real-time activity monitoring, auditing and optional encryption, DbProtect secures enterprise information assets by providing total coverage of database activity. “Study after study shows that addressing security concerns earlier in the development, testing, deployment, production process is less expensive and more effective.  As such, our support for Oracle 11g provides enterprises a unique opportunity to get it right from the start,” said Julian. For more information, visit here.

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Aternity and Oracle Form Joint Venture

Aternity, which provides what it calls frontline performance intelligence for Global 1000 enterprises, has announced that Oracle and Israel’s Chief Scientist, Eli Opper, are investing in a joint project with Aternity. The new venture is part of an agreement signed by Oracle and the Israeli government to increase support for start-up companies and independent software vendors. The joint venture provides Oracle E-Business suite users with easy access to the innovative frontline performance intelligence of the Aternity platform.

Aternity provides software that gives business managers and IT departments with precise information on how frontline users’ experiences impact business results, and gives them a path to constant business improvement. “We turn every PC into a self-monitoring system,” Trevor Matz, the president and CEO of Aternity, told 5 Minute Briefing after the announcement. “We are focused on understanding the world from the end-user’s point of view. How are IT services consumed by end-users?”

By monitoring users’ experiences with critical business applications in real-time, Aternity makes it possible for IT departments to proactively detect and isolate performance and other frontline related service-level problems, before they impact business. “Aternity provides IT executives in our client base accountable for the performance and availability of Oracle business-critical E-Business applications with in-depth visibility into how applications are performing from the perspective of the end-users on the business frontline, and with the information and metrics needed to rapidly identify and address performance challenges,” said Moshe Horav, Oracle vice president and managing director, Israel.

Aternity goes beyond traditional application performance monitoring, Matz said. The software generates comprehensive data about what the end-user is experiencing with every click of the mouse. The deal with Oracle, he added, means that Aternity will support Oracle E-Business applications out of the box. He anticipates signing similar arrangements with other ISVs in the future. “This is a big market focus for us,” he said. To find out if you qualify for a free proof-of-concept, visit Aternity here.

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Oracle Fusion Middleware Delivers World Record Clustered Results

Oracle announced that Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, together with Oracle Database and Oracle Real Application Clusters, running on HP Integrity server blades and HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Arrays, delivered world record clustered performance results with the SPECjAppServer2004 Benchmark. Reaching the highest performance ever achieved running a clustered database, this result surpassed the best SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark results from BEA WebLogic by 15 percent and IBM WebSphere with IBM DB2 UDB 9.1 by more than 116 percent.

Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 together with Oracle Database and Oracle Real Application Clusters achieved 9,459.19 SPECJAppServer2004 JOPS@Standard (jAppServer Operations per Second). The Java Application Servers were running on 11 HP Integrity BL860c server blades, with the latest two dual-core Intel Itanium 1.66 GHz processors running in the HP BladeSystem c-Class c7000 enclosure. The database server was running on two HP Integrity Superdome servers each with 40 dual-core Intel Itanium 1.6 GHz processors and an HP StorageWorks EVA8100. Both the application server and database tiers were running HP-UX 11i v3. This result adds to Oracle and HP's existing world record performance results with the SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark in the Single Node and Multi Node categories.

SPECjAppSServer2004 is a multi-tier benchmark for measuring the performance of a representative J2EE application and each of the components that make up the application environment, including hardware, application server software, JVM software, database software, JDBC drivers and the system network. For more information about Oracle Application Server 10g, visit here.

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Data Migration Projects Often Not Completed on Time

Our friends at Informatica shared this tidbit with us. According to Bloor Research, the total budget for data migration projects undertaken by Global 2000 companies in 2007 is set to break the $5 billion mark, rising to $8 billion by 2012, yet 64 percent of these projects are not delivered on time and 37 percent experience serious budget overruns that boost project costs by an average of 30 percent. These time and cost overruns can be substantially reduced or even eliminated through preventive actions and the application of appropriate disciplines—including data governance, ongoing data quality programs, focused migration methodologies, and the up-front use of data profiling and analysis techniques, the study said. Unisphere Research, our research arm, conducts proprietary research with leading IT user groups. To read abstracts of these studies, go here. Are you interested in having proprietary research conducted for your company about issues of concern to you? For more information, send an email to Tom@dbta.com.

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Happy New Year

Given the holiday calendar, this is our last of issue of the year. We would like to thank you for reading our newsletter. And though we are now in a period of uncertainty on a lot of fronts, we can be sure of a couple of things. Next year, enterprises will generate more data than they did this year. That data will have to be managed and many companies will be developing new technologies to extract more value from that data, and Oracle will be at the leading edge of that effort. Indeed, Oracle has turned in another stellar quarter and continues to gain ground despite the credit crunch. Finally, it will remain true that the companies that make the best use of their information will enjoy a competitive edge. To follow trends in the industry, keep reading 5 Minute Briefing and subscribe to Database Trends and Applications magazine here. We wish you a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

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COLLABORATE 08 – IOUG Forum Sessions Now Available: Register Today for Greatest Savings

Start planning your COLLABORATE 08 – IOUG Forum experience. The IOUG Forum schedule is now available. Don’t miss the opportunity to gain valuable insight from expert user speakers. Registration with the IOUG today provides you access to:

• More than 325 educational sessions in six user-driven tracks
• Special bootcamps on Fusion Middleware, Development and Business Intelligence
• Extended Oracle education through the IOUG’s University Seminars*, which provide deeper-dive training in a more relaxed environment
• 600 additional educational sessions presented by the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG) and Quest International (Quest), co-hosts of COLLABORATE 08

Discover why COLLABORATE 08 is the Oracle training event of the year. Hear directly from past attendees about the value of attending this conference.

Then, register with the IOUG by March 13 for greatest savings. Once registered, reserve your room at one of the conference hotels**.

Get faster approval and use your remaining 2007 training dollars, by providing your manager with the IOUG Forum training proposal.

*IOUG University Seminars are not included within your COLLABORATE 08 registration.

**Hotel reservations can only be made after you register.

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Share Your Oracle Knowledge in the IOUG’s SELECT Journal

The IOUG invites all of its members to share their Oracle knowledge by submitting best practices, tips and techniques for its technical publication, SELECT Journal. The IOUG is still looking for authors for 2008 issues, so consider submitting content on one of the quarterly themes:

• Automation, which includes new 11g features that help in automation and generic tools/techniques that assist in automation (Quarter 2)
  
• Grid, which includes RAC, ASM and related technologies (Quarter 3)
  
• Oracle Fusion Middleware and related technologies, which includes SOA, BPEL, Java/J2EE and enabling technologies, such as OiD (Quarter 4)

The space deadline for the second quarter issue is Friday, January 18. Click here to learn how to submit content for SELECT Journal, or e-mail select@ioug.org.

You may also view the latest issue here.

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RMOUG Training Days Registrants: Receive COLLABORATE 08 – IOUG Forum Discounts

The IOUG is partnering with the Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG) to provide you year-round educational options with dramatic cost-savings to your organization.

If you are registered for RMOUG Training Days, taking place February 13-14, 2008 in Denver, CO, you are entitled to receive discounted registration to COLLABORATE 08 – IOUG Forum , also taking place in Denver, CO, April 13-17, 2008. Take advantage of these opportunities to save on either an IOUG University Seminar registration or a complete conference registration:

• Attend IOUG Sunday University Seminars for only $400*, almost a $60 discount.
  
• Attend the entire COLLABORATE 08 conference for only $1,095*, with up to $1,000 in savings.
  

To take advantage of these reduced COLLABORATE 08 – IOUG Forum registration rates, you must first be registered for RMOUG Training Days. Upon registration completion, you will receive an e-mail confirmation with a promotional code to secure your COLLABORATE 08 – IOUG Forum registration discount. Simply enter the code when registering for COLLABORATE 08 – IOUG Forum and save!

*Registration rates apply to all registration periods with the exception of onsite.

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IOUG Members: Plan Your 2008 Oracle Events Schedule

As 2008 begins, make sure you check out the IOUG Events Calendar to find out when and where IOUG community events are being held. Learn when upcoming IOUG and Oracle-related conferences, seminars, Regional User Group (RUG) meetings, Web casts and more are taking place by viewing this calendar.

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Founded in 1993, the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG) (formerly International Oracle Users Group) is a user-driven membership organization for Oracle technology and database professionals serving more than 15,000 database administrators, developers, architects, technical managers and other Oracle professionals throughout North America and worldwide. The IOUG empowers its members and the broader Oracle community through their technical publication, SELECT Journal, Web site resources including more than 3000 papers, tips and articles and networking with other users through online discussion forums, Special Interest Groups and a network of regional Oracle user groups. For more information about the IOUG, please visit the IOUG Web site.

Database Trends and Applications, published by Unisphere Media, provides timely coverage of the technology and intelligence needed to conceptualize, plan, initiate, implement and manage large-scale integrated information projects. Unisphere Media also publishes 5 Minute Briefing: Data Integration, a summary of news, trends, and insights addressing crucial data integration challenges and 5 Minute Briefing: MultiValue, a review of news, technical tips and insights for the MultiValue database community. Visit our Web site here.

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