Oracle Corp’s chairman and founder, Larry Ellison, has committed to delivering an object-oriented version of the Oracle database in Release 8. Ellison promises that users won’t have to change a single line of code in an apparently seamless integration, and while he has said formerly that Release 7 – still to be delivered – will contain some object-oriented functionality (CI No 1,570), he has now nailed his colours to mast by asserting that relational technology is incapable of handling the information needs of the 1990s. Those needs, claims Ellison, will revolve around massively parallel architecture, which is propitious given his stake in Foster City, California-based nCube Inc, one of the several gran’daddies of massively parallel architecture.
