Oracle Database Insider Blog

After contemplating eWeek's top stories over holiday dessert, I came up with this short list of top stories for 2008.

Mobile Tel is looking for faster performance on 65 billion records of data. Their initial query performance is 10X to 72X faster than their current systems. Chicago Mercantile Exchange had a query that was taking four minutes. They tested it and ran in 10 seconds. They weren't even aware that the query got completed. That's the type of extreme performance businesses are seeing with Oracle Exadata Storage Server and HP Oracle Database Machine.

ISVs and businesses continue to adopt Oracle Database 11g realizing the benefits of recent upgrades.

More businesses are implementing very large data warehouses on Oracle Database: Chicago Stock Exchange – 35 TB; Quelle – 17 TB; and Anhui Telecom - 40 TB. IDC named Oracle a Major Leader in Data Warehouse Software.

It's said every year. Both Gartner and IDC independently named Oracle the #1 Relational Database.

I still argue the stories where businesses are realizing savings are the top stories of the year.

Happy 2009!

The January issue of the Database Insider is now available. It has lots of customer stories telling how they are using Oracle Database to save money, time, space, etc...

plus we met up with our friend Tom Kyte (of Ask Tom fame) and he gave us his New Year's resolutions.

what are your database-related resolutions?

e-DBA Ltd. had some challenges:

a). Achieve development, reducing costs without impacting delivery or compromising quality
b). Cut development timelines and lifetime cost of ownership
c). Build solutions on a technology platform that supports next-generation Web 2.0 applications
d). Build unrivalled speed, resilience, scalability, performance, and accessibility into customer solutions
e). Transform costly, inflexible Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access-based applications into versatile Web-based solutions

The upgraded their customer applications to Oracle Database 11g.

This enabled benefits from:
1. Advanced storage and compression, and automated system management, and cut lifetime cost of ownership.
2. Built a wide range of customized, flexible customer solutions using Oracle Application Express, reducing typical development cycles by 65% over competitor environments.
3. Minimized system downtime with Oracle Database 11g’s self-healing, automated system management capabilities.
4. Eliminated the downtime previously required for downloading functionality enhancements with hot database patching.
5. Leveraged the improved scalability, security, and reliability of Oracle Database 11g to build business-critical, client-facing solutions incorporating Web 2.0 functionality.
6. Used Oracle Active Data Guard to empower organizations to innovate, improve competitive advantage while boosting agility and reducing IT costs.

“Oracle Database 11g transforms the customized capabilities we develop for customers into enterprise-strength, next-generation solutions that power profitability.” – Justin Hudd, Director, e-DBA Ltd.

READ the full story on e-DBA's success with Oracle Database 11g

How is your business saving with Oracle Database?

Oracle Database 11g was recognized as the Best Database by InfoWorld as part of their Technology of the Year Awards for 2009.

Infoworld said: "If it weren't for the supremacy of Oracle Database, the impressive SQL Server 2008 release would have landed Microsoft a fifth award. But our prize for Best Database went to the incomparable Oracle Database 11g, a titanic release with capabilities -- namely Real Application Testing and Active Data Guard -- that DBAs previously could only dream about."

This year the Database Insider team couldn't agree more with the folks from Infoworld, read the full review.

so what do you think?

New-generation marketing communications agency Volume Ltd. leverages its creative expertise to design, deliver, host, and support online marketing campaigns and multichannel solutions for some of the world’s largest organizations.

Volume’s homegrown .NET and SQL Server-based infrastructure and development tools could no longer scale to meet its ambitious growth plans. Volume gained an almost instant financial return on its investment having taken just two months to migrate 50% of its business to Oracle Database 11g’s grid-based infrastructure platform.

Energy Costs Down 40%
Oracle Database 11g’s automated storage management, advanced compression, and data partitioning features have resulted in more efficient disk usage and enabled Volume to carry out a major hardware refresh. The company has reduced its server inventory by 50% while driving down energy costs by 40% within six months of implementation. “Halving server numbers represents a significant cost saving,” Chris Sykes, Managing Director, Volume Ltd. said. “With energy demands from information processing systems rising all the time, Oracle is helping us benefit from the financial advantages of going green."

Financial Gains
“The potential financial benefits of Oracle Database 11g are exponential. Even more importantly, we have won the renewed confidence of our major customers who know that their applications are backed up by the most reliable IT platform available.” - Benoit Alvarez, Divisional Managing Director and Head of Software Development, Volume Ltd.

Read Volume Ltd.'s Case Study

What type of ROI gains is your business realizing from Oracle Database 11g use?

According to our man on the ground at the Gartner BI Summit in The Hague, Netherlands, the Oracle strategies for Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing, matched or led the direction analysts and industry speakers foresee in the industry as a whole. Kevin Lancaster, part of Oracle's EMEA field organization for BI and Data Warehousing, sent these notes from the event:

Praise for Oracle Exadata
Lancaster managed to squeeze into the well-attended session where Grant Salmon, the CEO of LGR Telecommunications, spoke about his company’s experience with the HP Oracle Database Machine. Salmon began by talking about the impressive performance of his Oracle data warehouse before they began using the HP Oracle Database Machine. The existing data warehouse of his largest customer loads nearly 3 billion rows per day and serves over 1,500 concurrent users. Then Salmon talked about his company’s experience with that same data warehouse using the HP Oracle Database Machine. He highlighted some very significant benefits; mentioning 30 times to 60 times performance improvements, and calling it easier to implement, easier to scale, and easier to buy. And, Salmon added, there’s a single support number to call.

Salmon also told the Gartner BI Summit audience that, unlike other database appliances, the HP Oracle Exadata Database Machine runs on Oracle, so it handles his customer's mixed workloads extremely well.

Gartner Notes the Rise of Linux
Gartner presented a keynote that, among other things, discussed the ascendance of the Linux operating system; showing a chart which attributed an annual market for Linux of $3.7 billion and showed Oracle on Linux with around $2.9 billion -- an 85% market share and still growing!

Lastly, though it might not be the MOST important measure of success, Oracle’s Ice Bar at the BI Summit was a hit, with a mix of drinks available to attendees drifting over from Netezza’s smaller ice bar with its single drink offering.

Look out for Oracle at the Gartner BI Summit in North America, on March 9 – 11, and send us an update we can share with our readers.

Murali Vallath was on the Oracle campus last week attending at the International Oracle Users Group Community (IOUC) meeting. He was there representing two worthy users group: The popular RAC SIG and the up-and-coming All India Oracle Users Group (AIOUG). I (Jeff) like the RAC SIG’s aggregation of RAC blogs. On the All India site, read up on recent AIOUG TechNight events in Bangalore and Hyderabad.