Oracle Database Insider Blog

With record numbers of nominees and fierce competition, the folks from TUSC won Oracle's Titan Award in the database category for Grid and RAC Solution. TUSC developed a solution leveraging Oracle Grid and Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) that delivers scalability, high availability, ease of management, improved customer services and better use of existing assets to deliver more processing power. TUSC provides solutions based on Oracle's database, RAC, Enterprise Manager, DataGuard and Automated Storage Management technology.

TUSC president Rich Niemic joins other TUSC employees and Oracle's Jeff Henley and Tony Fernicola to receive their award.

Previous winners of this prestigous award include Cloud Creek Systems Inc in 2007, TriCore Solutions LLC in 2006, and Fair Isaac Corp in 2005.

Congrats to all our database Titans! we know many of you deserve this award, but only one per year is chosen.

Just surfing the web for reaction to Oracle's Exadata Storage Server and Database Machine announcement (there's quite a bit btw) and found Forrester Analyst, Andrew Reichman's blog entry Oracle Fires A Booming Shot Across The Bow Of The Storage Vendor Establishment where he says "This is the most dramatic announcement in storage in a decade, and could have the effect of significantly lowering TCO and improving performance across database applications of all kinds."

Your Insider team certainly thinks this is a significant, exciting offering - what do you think?

I heard this story over dinner at OpenWorld:

An Oracle user from biotech giant, let’s call him Richard, walked up to Oracles Spatial demo pod at OpenWorld and wanted to know more about how to leverage Oracle's mapping and spatial analysis capabilities using Oracle Application Server MapViewer. Richard is not in the biotech’s IT organization, but a user engaged in a variety of interesting analytical applications related to the biotech’s business. Much of their analysis is spatial or location-based (for example, looking at the capabilities and capacities of hospitals and other healthcare facilities for kidney dialysis and other services, with respect to demographics in the area, availability of government funding, boundaries of representatives' congressional districts, and other factors). The Oracle demonstrator, call him John, was pleasantly surprised to learn that Richard had already used APEX (Application Express), the powerful and easy-to-use development tool included with Oracle Database, to develop a few applications.

Richard was excited to learn that MapViewer could be used with APEX to incorporate maps and spatial queries into the biotech’s analytical applications. John described how easily he could build location-based applications, and how their IT group could use them as prototypes for more sophisticated enterprise implementations if desired. But Richard was way ahead of John, and already had some great ideas in mind.

Richard's next stop was the NAVTEQ exhibit booth, where Steven Pierce from Johnston-McLamb was demonstrating applications that Johnston-McLamb developed for customers using the spatial and location capabilities of Oracle Database and NAVTEQ mapping data (NAVTEQ and Johnston-McLamb are both excellent Oracle Spatial partners). After Richard described one map visualization and query application that he wanted at the biotech, Steven said "We can put that and many other similar applications together for you using Oracle MapViewer very easily. You don't have any sample data with you at Oracle OpenWorld, do you?". Richard replied, "As a matter of fact, I've got some business information from our Oracle database on this USB drive in Excel format." In a matter of minutes, Steven loaded the data into an Oracle Database table on the spot and showed it against a NAVTEQ base map using Oracle Application Server MapViewer.

Richard was sold. He sat down with Steven and drafted a brief statement of work. Johnston-McLamb got a contract on the spot to help the biotech company implement Oracle-based map visualization and spatial analysis applications.

Now that is an OpenWorld story with a happy ending!

- Jeff from the Oracle Database Insider team

Oracle worked with the IOUG to sponsor a survey on data security practices within the IOUG community. The IOUG has published the survey results in a new report entitled: Enterprise Data Insecurity: Are Organizations Prepared for the Threat From Within? – The 2008 IOUG Data Security Report.

The IOUG says a total of 316 responses were collected. The survey found that while organizations continue to be concerned about IT security in general, and most support the concept of data security, few have addressed the key vulnerabilities stemming from exposure of data to internal sources.

Roxana Bradescu from Oracle's database product marketing team discussed data privacy protection with PricewaterhouseCoopers' Alex Fowler who is a Director and Data Privacy Specialist. With extensive hands-on privacy and security management as well as implementation experience, Alex has worked with numerous customers to on data privacy and security in large-scale business environments. In this podcast, Alex shares some of his insights on the data privacy challenges customers face and the Oracle solutions that can help them.

LEARN MORE
Oracle Database Podcast Series

If you’re curious about how Oracle Exadata technology will affect the world of BI and analytics, and you’re on the East Coast of the US., join members of the Philadelphia Area Oracle Users Group (PHLOUG) for their quarterly meeting on Aug 16. Presenting will be Mark Rittman and Robert Stackowiak. Rittman’s talk: The Future of Oracle BI/DW Architecture. Stackowiak’s talk: Oracle Database Machine and Exadata Storage.

Catch them on Thursday, October 16th, 5:30 PM at the SIG’s Bala Cynwyd corporate headquarters.

The Database Insider team has worked to bring you the October edition of the newletter. This edition covers a lot of the Oracle OpenWorld highlights including Larry's keynote, the new announcements for the HP Oracle Database Machine, HP Oracle Exadata Storage Server, other database keynote replays, Cloud Computing Products and Services, customer stories, what the analysts think, and upcoming events.

It's all in the October issue.

We'd also like to know what topics you'd like to see in future editions.

Helping to serve the information needs of Oracle customers in Florida's Tampa Bay area, the Suncoast Oracle User Group meets once a month, and in addition, organizes bi-annual technology days. I was delighted to have the opportunity to take part in their recent technology day and meet many of their members. Board member Troy Ligon did an excellent job organizing the days event. The sun was indeed shining and we had a lot of active discussion around various topics including Oracle Database 11g, Oracle Application Express and Oracle Exadata. We also briefly discussed Oracle's recent Cloud Computing announcement, and would encourage Oracle customers in the Tampa Bay area to get along to the Suncoast Oracle User Group's next monthly meeting. It's on November 20th, where the subject of discussion will be Cloud Computing with Oracle!

There are some upcoming local Oracle User Groups where Oracle Exadata will be discussed. If these are in your area, try to stop by to talke with Oracle experts on the subject. Here're a few upcoming (and leave a comment if we are not mentioning your local groups' meeting)

October 23rd: Oklahoma City Oracle Users Group - Tom Kyte will be presenting
October 28th: St. Louis Oracle Users Group - Charlie Garry, from Oracle Server Technologies Product Management, will be presenting
October 30th: Indiana Oracle Users Group - Charlie Garry, from Oracle Server Technologies Product Management, will be presenting
October 30th: Ohio Oracle Users Group - Graham Wood, from Oracle Server Technologies, will be presenting

Also a couple new Oracle podcasts featuring Oracle Exadata have been published.

Each year the Oracle Magazine Editors’ Choice Awards recognize the accomplishments of Oracle's customers for achievement and vision in their particular field of expertise. Congratulations go to all this years awards winners. I hosted a customer panel session at Openworld 2008 and met up with Plamen Zyumbyulev of M'tel - DBA of the Year, and Hannes van Rooyen of LGR Telecommunications - Data Warehouse Architect of the Year. In our panel session, Plamen and Hannes offered some very interesting insights into how Oracle Database 11g is helping address their business and technical challenges; including their experiences benchmarking Oracle Exadata. You too can learn from their collective experiences in the Oracle Database Podcast Series. Plamen talks about his experiences using Oracle Database 11g at M'Tel, and look out for a podcast with LGR Telecommunications coming soon. I'd also recommend tuning into the experiences of other Oracle customers and partners, including NIF, Melbourne Heath, Intermap and many others.

Here's a chance to see Oracle Exadata in action!

Join your colleagues at the TDWI World Conference New Orleans, November 2-7, for a week of in-depth business intelligence and data warehousing education presented by TDWI. Oracle is a 2008 TDWI Partner Member.

Are you addicted to your blackberry? Can't take the kids to the beach without email access? Has e-mail gone down at your company for an hour or so - it's a complete productivity hamper on businesses.

For better or worse, the need for 24x7 access is prevalent today. We demand immediate access to our collegues, systems and data. Oracle marketing has created a tool so you can assess the availability of your architecture. Give it a try to see if your system is truly 24x7 available.

Oracle Database 11g is designed to protect your business from all common causes of planned and unplanned downtime. So you can stay in touch 24x7.

Coming next month!! Sign up now to reserve your space.

Learn how to improve data warehouse query performance by a factor of 10x with Oracle Exadata and hear firsthand in a small, face-to-face setting from Oracle Senior Executives and experts about the revolutionary new Oracle Exadata and HP Oracle Database Machine and how they fit into Oracle's data warehousing strategy.

Keynotes
Technical Talks and Hands-on Sessions
Travel and Logistics
Sponsors
REGISTER for BIWA now!
Last year's BIWA Summit 2007 was sold out (did you attend - if so, please leave a comment) and please don't wait too long to register.

BIWA Summit 2008
December 2 - 3, 2008

Oracle Conference Center
350 Oracle Parkway
Redwood Shores, CA 94065
To register and for more information go to: www.biwasummit08.org

Don't miss this unique opportunity to talk with Oracle senior development execs about the new products announced at Oracle OpenWorld 2008.

Industry analyst firm IDC recently released a couple of independent reviews focusing on recent Oracle Exadata announcement. You can read the reports by clicking on the links below.

Oracle Unveils Its New Exadata Database Server at Oracle OpenWorld 2008
by Marc Holland, Lynne A. Dunbrack and Alan S. Louie, Ph.D.

Oracle's X-Factor: HP Oracle Exadata Storage Server and the HP Oracle Database Machine
by Carl Olofson, Jean Bozman and Dan Vesset