What we’re talking about is saving money and reducing the cost of your IT infrastructure. These are the words of Ken Jacobs, vice president for server products and strategy at Oracle Corp, speaking at the all singing, all dancing launch of Oracle8 this week, that featured a considerable push towards the Network Computer. The company doesn’t seem to think the database launch was overshadowed by the NC and stands firm on its claims of having the most powerful object relational database on the market. The launch has been somewhat overshadowed in recent weeks and months by its late delivery and the noticeable absence of Java functionality and the Sedona tool set. Justifying Sedona’s absence, Jacobs said: Java was a problem for Sedona. Visual Basic was the language of choice when the project began, that choice was made before the explosion of interest in the Internet, and said that Sedona wasn’t the most important aspect of the database. Jacobs concluded: We never announced that Sedona would come out in concert with Oracle8. The new database will apparently support all data types and the company is treating it as the best thing since sliced bread, although Jacobs says Oracle is already working on Oracle 8.1, and commented that there is always going to be an issue of addressing additional functionality. It has also come to light this week that Oracle is working with Intel Corp on the optimization of Oracle8 on Intel architecture. The companies will work together establishing 64- bit optimization of the database for Intel’s IA-64-based product and on reaching advanced clustered scalability. But if users don’t want to turn to the new database, Oracle will continue to sell and support Oracle7 for the time being, but there will be a termination period in a couple of years time, when it will focus away from the product, and existing users will have to organize support via pre-arranged contracts.
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