Oracle Database Insider Blog

Oracle will be in booth location 2223-2225 at the ESRI International User Conference July 13-17 in San Diego, CA. With more than 10,000 attendees expected, this event is billed as the world's largest gathering of GIS professionals. This is an important event for organizations interested in leveraging location data in the enterprise, especially since a great many ESRI users are also Oracle Database customers.

Oracle staff will be on hand to discuss and demonstrate the core spatial database management capabilities of Oracle Locator and Oracle Spatial 11g, the ability to location-enable applications with Oracle Fusion Middleware MapViewer, and the integration of map visualization and spatial analysis in Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition.

Be sure to visit us in San Diego at booth 2223-2225 and learn why Oracle Spatial is the best database platform for ESRI users.

Find out more about Oracle's spatial and location technology at oracle.com/goto/spatial.

Microsoft announced it is deprecating Microsoft OracleClient, a Microsoft-built .NET data provider for the Oracle Database because third-party providers, such as Oracle, offer superior ADO.NET providers. For existing Microsoft OracleClient developers, this is an opportunity to take a fresh look at the Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET), which is free to download from OTN. In recent years, Oracle has added new features to ODP.NET for performance tuning, user-defined types, advanced queuing, RAC connection pooling, and supporting multiple ODP.NET client versions simultaneously on the same machine.

Check out the ODP.NET for Microsoft OracleClient Developers page to learn why developers are choosing ODP.NET for their Oracle .NET projects, and how using ODP.NET makes .NET applications for Oracle Database more stable, flexible and faster. The page will also provide a step-by-step Microsoft OracleClient to ODP.NET migration tutorial in the near future.

Let us know if you are developing .NET applications for Oracle Database and if you are already using ODP.NET!

There was plenty of interest in Oracle Spatial at last week’s ESRI International User Conference in San Diego. Despite a rather remote location, Oracle’s exhibit booth drew hundreds of visitors from all over the world representing all levels of government, the military, education, and a wide spectrum of industries.

There were a lot of people at this years ODTUG Kaleidoscope conference talking about Oracle Application Express (Oracle APEX). If you are good with SQL, APEX opens up a whole world of possibilities for rapid application development. And even if you’re not good with SQL the tool is easy enough to use that you can still build functional, secure Web applications. Senior Editor Jeff Erickson talked with ODTUG attendee and founder of Sumner Technologies, Scott Spendolini, to learn more about how people are using this tool.

A recent study conducted by the Edison Group quantifies how Oracle Database widens the manageability lead against Microsoft SQL Server and shows:

* DBAs can perform typical administrative functions in 41% less time when using Oracle Database 11g compared to Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
* Oracle Database 11g requires 43% fewer steps for the same set of standard RDBMS tasks than Microsoft SQL Server 2008 using Edison’s metric for complexity assessment.
* Benefiting from increased DBA productivity due to lower complexity and higher efficiency cited above, businesses could save up to $33,520.47 per year per DBA by using Oracle Database 11g rather than Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

The main areas of difference Edison discovered between the two products were:

Backup & Recovery: In the case of backup and recovery tasks, Oracle Database 11g offers architectural and functional capabilities beyond those offered by SQL Server 2008. Oracle Database 11g took 53% less time and 60% fewer steps than Microsoft SQL Server in backup and recovery tasks.

Performance Diagnostics and Tuning: In this category, Oracle Database 11g demonstrated a significant 87% savings in time.

Once more Oracle Database 11g with its industry leading self-management infrastructure, simply outperforms Microsoft SQL Server.

LEARN MORE
Oracle.com: Edison Group Comparative Management Costs Study - Oracle Database 11g vs. Microsoft SQL Server 2008

Does your organization manage a lot of spatial data? Find out how two major spatial data vendors use Oracle Spatial technology to help.

There can be great value in viewing business information on maps with high quality satellite imagery backgrounds, or using 3D terrain models for visualization and analysis - but these rich forms of spatial data often present daunting storage and management challenges.

This webinar will show you how Oracle Spatial adds management of imagery, 3D data, and more to Oracle Database's standard location data management and query capabilities. DigitalGlobe will describe how Oracle users can download the latest imagery via Web services, and Intermap, winner of this year's Oracle Spatial Excellence Innovator Award, will share experience gained managing their very large 3D terrain database.

Click here to register for this free and informative webinar.

Learn more about Oracle's spatial and location technology at: oracle.com/goto/spatial

What better way to spend a summer day than in San Diego? There's sun, surf, sand, and of course....TDWI.

Join Oracle at the TDWI World Conference August 2-7, 2009 in San Diego, California. Stop by Oracle booth #306 and talk to data warehousing and business intelligence experts, attend one of our mini theatre sessions, and sign up for our free, two-hour workshop:

Oracle Data Warehousing Best Practices Workshop
Oracle product developers will share the lessons they learned working with some of the largest data warehousing systems in the world. The session will cover best practices for query optimization, optimizer statistics, schema design techniques, and using the Oracle Exadata Storage Server to improve data warehouse performance. You will be able to apply the practical lessons from this workshop directly to your day-to-day job, and you can take home all related materials and scripts.

Enjoy light refreshments and enter to win an iPod Nano
Pre register via email: ellen.skoskiewicz@oracle.com
Seats are limited – Register Today!

Also, be sure to swing by the Oracle booth Tuesday to talk to Keynote speaker Tony Politano and receive a signed copy of his book, Chief Performance Officer.

Don’t miss Oracle at these sessions:

Session: Evaluating ETL Tools and Technologies: Vendors in Action
Monday, August 3, 2009, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Session: Developing Your BI Tool Strategy and BI Bake Off
Tuesday, August 4, 2009, 8:00 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.

See you there!