Having won clear leadership in the third party relational database management systems market and put itself on target to become the next software company to record $1,000m in annual turnover, Oracle Corp is not planning to sit back and just watch the money roll in. The Belmont, California firm is reportedly pulling out all the stops to finish Oracle Version 7.0 to get it ready for launch next year. The new release is planned to offer a fully distributed location-transparent database which if it works will substantially increase the attractions of Oracle by virtue of the fact that the software runs on so many different types of hardware from IBM 370-type mainframes down. Distributed database is one of the thorniest issues in the database world and IBM certainly does not expect to offer a true distributed database any time soon. Other features planned for Oracle Version 7.0 are B2-level security and further support for ANSI database standards, and president Larry Ellison is promising that the thing will be announced by the time the crocuses bloom.
