In May 2008 Oracle successfully released the latest version of the Oracle IRM technology. This is the first major release within Oracle and demonstrates some of the strengths gained since being acquired. Headline items in this release are,
- Support for Microsoft Windows Vista
- Support for Office 2007 suite of applications: Word, Excel and PowerPoint
- Closer in-application integration improving usability for Microsoft Office documents
- Additional language support for Dutch and Brazilian Portuguese
- Support for Microsoft Excel links between sealed workbooks
The most impressive new change is the way the Oracle IRM Desktop handles Microsoft Office documents. Instead of the underlying code utilizing the browser plug in architecture to control the office rendering application (Word, Excel or PowerPoint) the IRM Desktop is now integrated directly into the Office application itself. This enables a much more satisfying user experience and continues our efforts to ensure that using sealed content is as close to using its unsealed counter part up until the point where rights deems otherwise, such as limiting printing and editing. This work has also enabled functionality such as supporting links in sealed Excel workbooks.
Prior to the acquisition by Oracle, the IRM technology was acquired by Stellent, a content management company. Work therefore had long been underway to integrate the IRM software with what is now the Oracle Universal Content Management (UCM) system which has been completed and is part of this 10gR3 release. Files can be can be automatically sealed on check-in and are then indexed to be made search able. Note that Oracle IRM is unique in the market place in offering the functionality to index and search through encrypted content, returning results based on users rights to the content itself. Sealed web-viewable renditions are also generated in the same manner as normal PDF documents via the inbound refinery.
Another area we decided to improve was our support for LDAP and non-LDAP enterprise directories.
- Support for Oracle Virtual Directory; and all OVD supported directories
- Enhanced support for Sun ONE Directory (iPlanet)
- User provisioning with random passwords, for accounts without passwords
- New toolkit to help integration customizations
Finally new installer technology means that old Desktop versions need to be uninstalled prior to install This new Oracle IRM Desktop will not allow support for Microsoft Office if the user has a double-byte character set default locale for their Windows operating system. These operating systems will be supported in a release later this year.
For more detail please see the release notes and the software can be downloaded from the Oracle Technology Network. If you would like to try Oracle IRM please contact us for an online evaluation.
