Oracle Corp was apparently offended by reports that the beta program of Oracle8 might be late, and said Friday that the first CDs were leaving the factory and heading for beta sites. It said about 300 beta testers have been trained and are ready to receive it. The company is still clammed tight shut as to what’s in Oracle8 though. All Ken Jacobs, VP product strategy and Oracle8 program manager would say is that it’s object-oriented and aimed at high-end systems – but he wasn’t ruling out it having object and relational capabilities too. Oracle8 and Sedona, its next generation server development environment and object database extensions, are merely integrated, but not co-dependent, according to Jacobs. He said Sedona will work with Oracle7.x as well. They are both slated for general availability in the first half of next year. As for the competition, Jacobs believes Informix Software Inc to be confused, Microsoft Corp’s SQL Server to be not useful for the real world, and poor old Sybase Inc to be dead meat. Jacobs put Oracle’s reticence down to its storming financial performance in recent times. In other words, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
