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.

Yesterday, Oracle announced the general availability of Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET, a free plug-in that enables developers to use Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 to develop and deploy Microsoft .NET Framework-based applications with Oracle Database 10g. Oracle also unveiled a new release of Oracle Data Provider for .NET in support of ADO.NET 2.0, Microsoft's standard for data access. "Oracle has a long-standing commitment of working with Microsoft and Microsoft developers," Willie Hardie, Oracle's vice president of database product marketing, told 5 Minute Briefing in an exclusive interview prior to the announcement.

During Oracle OpenWorld this fall, he added, Oracle will sponsor a "conference within the conference" aimed specifically at the needs of the developer community. The new tools, he added, work across the entire 10g product line. "You can develop using Visual Studio 2005 and start with the Express edition and move unchanged to Standard, Enterprise and clusters," Hardie noted. Oracle has been "delighted" with the uptake of the free version of Oracle Express, which has been available for download since February.

The new support for ADO.NET, Alex Keh, principal product manager, told 5 Minute Briefing, ensures that developers can take full advantage of the new features Microsoft has added in .NET 2.0. "It is easier to program and there are performance improvements," he said. Moreover, he added, "They can use Oracle functionality not available in .NET," including automatic failover for Oracle RAC and proxy identification, an important security feature.

The headline feature for Oracle's support of Visual Studio 2005, said Christian Shay, also a principal product manager, is an integrated debugger for PL/SQL. "They have end-to-end debugging. They can develop code and stored procedures in and all the debugging in Visual Studio. They do not have to leave Visual Studio," he said. "And that is what they wanted.

Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET with support for Visual Studio 2005 is generally available at no cost from OTN here. Oracle Data Provider for .NET in support of ADO.NET 2.0 is available for download at no cost from OTN here.

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Oracle Announces Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g Release 2

In its first major release in two years, Oracle has taken the wraps off Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g Release 2, its data warehouse design and ETL (extract, transform, load) solution. "We have added significant new functionality and have made significant pricing and packaging changes," Paul Narth, senior group manager, Oracle Warehouse Builder Product Management, told 5 Minute Briefing. The core functionality, Narth said, is the ability to move data from among data sources including non-Oracle databases. The Oracle database serves as the transformation engine, making the process extract, load, transform, instead of using the traditional steps, and providing what the company claims is unparalleled performance and scalability.

In addition the core functionality, Oracle is offering two add on packages - a data quality module and an enterprise ETL module-as well as a family of connectors. The release includes several features to enhance data quality including name and address cleansing and match-and-merge de-duplication features. "You may have the best ETL technology but it won't help if the data is bad," Narth said.

Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g R2 includes the ability to design relational and OLAP database structures, making it easy to store data in a common Oracle Database repository and offer users a choice of BI tools such as Oracle Business Intelligence Suite, spreadsheets, and many others. It also support for targeting non-Oracle Databases, allowing users to choose where their data is ultimately stored. "Experts" is a new, unique feature that helps save users time and costs. It enables organizations to encapsulate their own development standards and best practices as wizards, and also allows a broad range of users, including end users, access to Oracle Warehouse Builder's declarative functionality. "We will help customers leverage the investment in technology," Narth said.

Oracle has also restructured the pricing and packaging for Oracle Warehouse Builder, which has been on the market since 2002. The core database design and ETL capabilities of Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g R2 are now included with Oracle Database 10g R2 Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition, and Standard Edition One at no additional cost. For more information on Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g R2, go here.

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Oracle Fusion Middleware Crosses Billion Dollar Milestone

The increasing adoption of service-oriented architecture has contributed to the growth of Oracle Fusion Middleware, which passed the $1 billion revenue threshold for fiscal year 2006. "Certainly SOA has been one of the big drivers of our growth," Rick Schultz, vice president for Oracle Fusion Middleware, told 5 Minute Briefing. "SOA, along with business insight and business intelligence technologies, and security and identity management technologies, have been really propelling our growth."

During the most recent quarter, Q4 FY06, Oracle Fusion Middleware license revenue grew 57 percent year over year. For the entire fiscal year, Oracle Fusion Middleware grew 34.5 percent year over year in license revenue.

According to the company, nearly half of Oracle middleware revenue during FY06 came from partners, demonstrating the strength of its middleware product with developers and systems integrators.

Observing that Oracle "just got serious about this business about five years ago," Schultz said that Oracle Fusion Middleware revenue passing a billion dollars is noteworthy not only to Oracle as one of its three core product businesses, along with database and applications, but also it is significant in the overall market. "This puts us at the same size as a BEA Systems," he said, "and, if you compare the growth rates, we are growing much more rapidly than BEA. We are basically in the process right now of solidifying our spot as the number two provider in middleware. We feel we have come a long way."

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Accenture Innovation Center for Oracle Launched

Accenture, global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, has opened an Innovation Center for Oracle at the Oracle headquarters in Redwood Shores. According to the companies, the center is dedicated to the development of new ideas and innovative solutions based on Oracle's Server Technologies infrastructure and Oracle Applications software. It will initially focus on the development of leading-edge service-oriented reference architectures and reference applications based on Oracle Fusion Middleware.

The Accenture Innovation Center for Oracle is intended to enable Accenture to capture and distribute Oracle Applications and Oracle Server Technologies Infrastructure product expertise through collaboration and direct links with Oracle's research and development teams, Accenture's global delivery center network of more than 40 delivery centers, and Accenture Technology Labs throughout the world. The center will also enable Accenture and Oracle to help clients by developing and delivering first-to-market, Oracle-based solutions using Accenture processes, methodologies and tools for service-oriented architectures (SOA) and other Oracle technology-based and industry-specific assets, and by demonstrating newly developed Accenture service offerings that leverage software products such as Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Applications and Oracle Industries Solutions.

The collaboration with Oracle is part of Accenture's broader $450 million investment in SOA, according to Don Rippert, chief technology officer at Accenture. Accenture has already developed an SOA reference architecture - a set of definitions, frameworks, best practices, decision trees and code to help design and build an SOA - based on Oracle's Fusion Middleware platform. For more on Accenture, go here.

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New Vendors Join SOA Standards Efforts

Representatives from leading technology vendors working towards developing specifications for service component architectures (SCA) and service data objects (SDO) announced new vendors supporting the specifications during a conference call last week.

In late 2005, a group of vendors, including Oracle, BEA Systems, IBM, IONA Technologies, SAP AG, Siebel Systems, Sybase, Xcalia and Zend Technolgoies, announced an effort to develop specifications and resulting collaborative technologies that simplify how organizations create and implement applications in a service-oriented architecture. Using SOA Programming Model Specifications, the intent is to allow organizations to more easily create new and transform existing IT assets into reusable services that can be rapidly adapted to meeting changing business requirements. Additionally the specifications are intended to reduce complexity associated with developing applications by providing a way to unify services regardless of programming language and deployment platform.

Since agreeing to work together, the founding members have been joined by Cape Clear, Interface21, Primeton Technologies, Progress Software (formerly Sonic Software), Red Hat, Rogue Wave Software, Software AG, Sun Microsystems and TIBCO Software.

According to the group, its efforts have already resulted in the development of new draft SCA specifications for a declarative policy framework; improved description of connectivity with bindings specifications for JMS, JCA and Web Services; and new BPEL and PHP authoring models. In addition, draft specifications for Service Assembly; Java and C++ service authoring; and SDO have been updated. The group also said it has launched a vendor-neutral Web site for Open Service Oriented Architecture. Click here to visit.

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Database Administration Takes Time

Okay, this may be like preaching to the choir but despite the investment both database vendors and database tools vendors have created tools to make database administration more autonomic, to use a popular buzzword, database administration still takes a lot of time. In the research study, The 24x7 Challenge: The IOUG 2006 Survey on High Availability Trends, conducted by Unisphere Research, the research arm of 5 Minute Briefing, in conjunction with the Independent Oracle Users Group and sponsored by GoldenGate, a vendor of transaction data management solutions, 41 percent of the respondents indicated that they spent five hours a week or more on database administration tasks.

In the poll of 265 data management professionals, of which 51 percent were database administrators, database administration was named most frequently as the task taking more than five hours weekly. Other tasks that consumed more than five hours a week included ongoing maintenance, named by 29 percent of the respondents, performance-tuning, also mentioned by 29 percent of the respondents, and application development, which was tabbed by 22 percent of the respondents.

Members of the IOUG can receive the executive summary of this proprietary research as a membership benefit. Visit the IOUG Web site 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. For snapshot of several key studies completed by Unisphere Research over the past six months, access the July issue of Database Trends and Applications magazine online here and click on the read archive button.

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Oracle, Microsoft and Others

Oracle has announced new tools to support developers working in the .NET environment. As Willie Hardie, vice president of database marketing at Oracle, told 5 Minute Briefing, several development paradigms have emerged including .NET, Java and newer environments like PHP. Oracle, he said, is determined to support them all and to provide developers working in each with a superb experience. This is the way it should be. Though much has been made about Oracle's strategy to integrate the stack from application to - well, you fill in the blank - Oracle is also effectively competing in heterogeneous environments. For example, Oracle Data Provider for .NET means the same code can be used to support databases from different vendors. And, Oracle Warehouse Builder also supports non-Oracle data sources. Clearly, Oracle is pursuing a two-pronged strategy, which is good for choice. To follow the major trends in enterprise information management, both structured and unstructured, subscribe to Database Trends and Applications here.

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Oracle Technology and IOUC Beta Testing Program

The International Oracle User Conference (IOUC) Beta Testing Program is a joint initiative of the IOUC Product Development Committee and Oracle USA. The overall goal is to allow selected user group members to do in-depth testing and analysis of Oracle's new products and releases in order to help Oracle deliver better products to market. Beta testing participants perform in-depth testing of the next generation of Oracle products.

Sign-up today to become a potential tester! Build your personal knowledge base, become an industry recognized technology leader, and help influence Oracle's future product direction. IOUG members have participated in several beta tests with Oracle including Oracle Database 10g. Sign up to be a tester and make sure the IOUG is represented!

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Oracle Introduces New Customer Offerings

At the recent COLLABORATE 06 event, Oracle keynote, President, Charles E. Phillips Jr. detailed the company's long-term commitment to provide continued enhancements to current Oracle Applications beyond the delivery of Oracle Fusion Applications in 2008. Throughout August, Oracle will be contacting its customer base about a series of customer offerings. In this installed base campaign, Oracle's General Managers for Applications will provide updates on Applications Unlimited and its role relative to each product: JD Edwards World, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, PeopleSoft Enterprise, Seibel and Oracle E-Business Suite. Check out the current updates on PeopleSoft Enterprise and Siebel customer offerings today! Stay tuned as upcoming customer offerings will be highlighted on the IOUG Website.

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Help Find the Best in the Community - Nominate an Oracle ACE

What do Tom Kyte, Steven Fuerestein, JungSik Kim, Mark Rittman, and Andrew Clarke have in common? They all go above and beyond to help their fellow colleagues with advice on Oracle technology. They are all Oracle ACE's!

The Oracle ACE program recognizes Oracle advocates who have given back to the technical community, whether through writing books, articles or blogs, speaking at User group or other Oracle events, participating in OTN Discussion Forums, or simply serving as Oracle evangelists in their respective organizations.

Established in 2003, the number of ACE's continues to grow, with currently 54 Oracle ACE's in 12 countries.

If you or somebody you know deserves Oracle ACE merit, please visit the Oracle ACE Website for more program information and nomination details.

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Join the IOUG at Oracle OpenWorld Today!

Join the IOUG at Oracle OpenWorld! The conference will be held October 22-26 in San Francisco at the Moscone Center and you can choose from numerous sessions led by fellow IOUG members.

In addition to customer-driven educational sessions, the following IOUG Special Interest Groups (SIGs) will be meeting onsite:

• Enterprise Management Best Practices
• Middleware Technologies
• PeopleSoft Fusion
• Cerner Technical
• Spatial
• SAP
• DWBI
• Oracle Application Express
• RAC
• Life Sciences

Register early to save $400! On the online registration form, be sure to reference the IOUG on the question, "If other, how did you hear about this event?"

Stay tuned for more information on the OpenWorld User Group Forum!

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Oracle Technology Days

Register now for a free seminar and learn from experts about how to drive efficiency through Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Join us to learn how you can have a complete infrastructure for SOA-based applications, using Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Fusion Middleware, and Oracle Enterprise Management software. Register now for an Oracle Technology Day in a city near you!

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IOUG Events Calendar

Take advantage of what the IOUG community can offer! All IOUG members have access to the Events Calendar where they can view upcoming IOUG and Oracle-related conferences, seminars, Regional User Group (RUG) meetings, Web casts and more!

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IOUG InstaPoll Question

Visit the IOUG Web site, log in, and answer the current InstaPoll question regarding which features of Oracle Application Server Portal 10g you are currently using.

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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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