|
In response to new information technology requirements, a new era of enterprise computing is emerging, the era of network computing. Oracle8, the next generation of the Oracle data server, has been fundamentally redesigned to meet the new requirements presented by the network computing era. Historically, data servers have provided support for characters and numbers. Oracle8 can anipulate every type of data found in an enterprise. With integrated support for text, spatial, image, time-series, and video/audio data, Oracle8 can satisfy many of the requirements for storage and retrieval of complex data types. Also, with a special capability known as extensibility, customers and third parties can create a software cartridge that plugs into Oracle8 whenever support for a highly unique data type is required. To reduce application development time, Oracle8 completely supports the traditional relational data model and the emerging object-relational data model within the same database system. Oracle8's object-relational capabilities allow users to create "business objects." A business object can be anything the user defines. For example, an insurance policy, a purchase order, or a flight reservation. Also, Oracle Object Views, which are unique to Oracle8, allow both relational and object-relational applications to operate on the same databases. This evolutionary, pragmatic approach enables customers to deploy object-relational technology at their own speed. Oracle's strategy of enabling simple, cost-effective, reliable, and secure network computing requires the data server to play a more important role. At this months meeting Samuel DeFazio will provide an overview of object database technology and describe how Oracle8, the Database for Network Computing, has been specifically designed to support the new data server requirements that are emerging from this new era. Whether deploying a data server on a mainframe, UNIX system, or Windows NT operating system on any hardware configuration, Oracle8 can support all users and data in a faster and more cost-effective way than ever before. Dr. Samuel DeFazio is Director of Object Database Technology for Oracle Corporation. His current research and development focus is the design and implementation of object-relational database technology for complex forms of data. |