It follows the release of similar plug-ins for IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, Check Point firewall, and the F5 web farm load balancers last fall.
Specifically, Oracle is adding plug-ins for seven Microsoft server products. They include Active Directory, BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, Internet Information Server (IIS), Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server, SQL Server, and the .NET framework.
Oracle Enterprise Manager is the console that manages Oracle databases and middleware. The current version, Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control was a complete rewrite that was released last year. It provides full administration, diagnostics, configuration management, and deployment of patches to Oracle servers.
By contrast, for third-party systems, Oracle Enterprise Manager’s role is providing passive monitoring of operations and configuration changes. The goal is providing a common view of Oracle and whatever else surrounds it.
According to Jay Rossiter, vice president of systems management products, the plug-ins formalized the APIs that Oracle was already developing to monitor third party middle tier systems. All were developed by Oracle in cooperation with each of the third parties involved. In this case, Microsoft worked with Oracle to expose functions being instrumented.
On the horizon, Oracle will add plug-ins for other mid-tier platforms including JBoss and IBM DB2. The Microsoft plug-ins are available now.
