Oracle released a free dev tool for its Fusion middleware. The new productivity tool is called Oracle Developer Depot and provides access to a library or reusable and sample code for rapid development of Java app prototypes.

After the mega acquisition of rival PeopleSoft, the database world leader has many opportunities for the future.  Database marketing secures Oracle future; the strong revenue growth will be in two areas: oracle.com application service provider (ASP) business that allows companies to rent Oracle’s e-business software over the Web, and its application-server software business technology, that runs e-business and Web site transactions.

Headquartered in Redwood Shores, California (US), Oracle develops and deploys Internet enabled enterprise software across its entire product line, which includes database, server, enterprise business applications and application development, and decision support tools. Oracle offers e-business solutions that extend from front- office customers relationship management to back-office operational applications to platform infrastructure.

Oracle co-president Charles Phillips offered a few hints as to what partners can expect from the company’s next database and applications generation. The upcoming Oracle 11g database, for example, will allow segregation between applications users and the database that feeds their applications. Application users will not be able to see underlying data in the database unless they have the rights to see it.

What is being done now in compliance is the “tip of the iceberg”. “Future Oracle users will be able to audit database information and access by applications and users. It will track not only which applications it is possible to use, but what data must be viewed, what changes was made; it will identify the person once and track him across all apps and the stack. It will be a complete audit trail from keyboard to disk,” Phillips said.

Oracle’s current technology can monitor user response times across the stack and isolate problems, Phillips said. Future applications will be able to initiate a rollback of the application server and database.  Phillips also talked up tighter integration and going forward between the core Oracle database and middleware stack and applications going forward. “We have assets on the tech side that apply elsewhere. In our umbrella strategy, we have single core foundation of the technology stack – the database and middleware. Around that we have industry-oriented applications, ERP and CRM. The applications should leverage the core stack.”

Oracle has pledged continued upgrades not only to its homegrown apps suite but for Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards apps as well. The company can do more for customers and partners in terms of security, high availability and compliance in its next product wave. Many JD Edwards and PeopleSoft customers run their applications on IBM’s DB2 database, which competes with Oracle’s bread-and-butter database. Likewise, Oracle has promised that its database will continue to fully support third-party applications that compete with its own software.

Also was announced new Business Accelerators for the mid market. These wizard-like programs let partners and users easily enter information about the desired application and automate its optimal set up, Oracle said. A new Oracle Accelerate program aims to get partners to extend these accelerators for their verticals. Phillips also announced a new Configuration Support manager to ease deployments and optimize performance. It will be part of Oracle’s Premier support options.

In the future, Oracle products will enable centralized entitlements, so a user’s access to data and applications will automatically follow him or her thought applications and tasks. Oracle’s business information is about how to manage it, use it, share it, and protect it. The word’s largest enterprise software company, Oracle is the only vendor to offer solutions for every tier of your business: database, middleware, business intelligence, business applications, and collaboration. With Oracle, information that helps to measure results, improve processes, and communicate a single truth to the constituents is possible quick and in a correct manner.

Oracle has made a number of strategic acquisitions to help the users get the broadest functionality and the most value from the business applications. In the future they will make it even easier for the users to take advantage of the rich customer relationship management capabilities of Oracle’s Siebel CRM, by helping the users to integrate Siebel applications with the Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise applications.

Oracle’s Siebel Customer Relationship Management applications help provide insight to the right person at the right time, leading to faster, better informed decision. With solutions tailored to the specific needs of more than 20 industries, Siebel provides predictive analytics capabilities that deliver real-time intelligence, greater flexibility through support of both J2EE and .Net, and a lower total cost ownership.

Siebel Integrations are software bridges that reduce implementation costs by accelerating the deployment time required for front to back office integration – all without disruption to existing business operations. By allowing information to flow across entire enterprise business processes, Siebel integrations provide immediate value.

In addition to Siebel CRM Call Center on Demand to Oracle E-Business Suite, which was just released, Oracle is developing these Siebel Integration offerings:

• Siebel Order Capture to Oracle Order Management, that combines Siebel’s campaign to opportunity product set with Oracle’s order management, fulfillment, and financials capabilities, giving to the users a single view of his opportunities to cash business process.
• Siebel CRM on Demand to Oracle E-Business Suite provides consistent customer data across the front and back office applications, enabling a true 360-degree view, so the user can provide more knowledgeable and personalized customer service.
• Siebel CRM to I-flex FLEXCUBE Integration enables a quick, integrated account and fulfillment process, reducing the time required to open an account, while allowing fast service request processing across multiple request channels.

Oracle’s commitment to providing industry solutions has never been stronger; they customers experience it, their partners share it, and analysts recognize the scope and strength of offerings that have been carefully developed with the input of thousand of valuable customers.

Oracle industry applications are based on a wealth of industry experience and are tailored to address the unique challenges and processes that drive the business. Oracle applications and technologies provides a uniquely platform that is helping industry leaders around the world get the most accurate and up-to-date information from their business systems.

Recovery Manager (RMAN) was introduced in Oracle 8.0 and enabled true incremental backups for the first time. Prior to RMAN, database exports could be taken incrementally, but if any block in a table was changed, the entire table was written. RMAN incremental backups write only the changed blocks from a given data file, thus saving space.

Priori to the version 10g, however, incremental backups required a scan of an entire data file to detect which blocks in it had changed. For very large databases, this made the time required for incremental not much better than for full backups, even though space was saved.  Change tracking, sometimes called Block Change Tracking, provides a solution by recording to a separate Change Tracking file, which blocks have changed. The changes are written in real time by a background process.

This is a performance impact to enabling Change Tracking, so unless you are using RMAN’s incremental backup feature, it is best left disabled. But if you are doing incremental backups, the time lost recording changes will be more than made up in faster backups.

Some industries are aerospace and defense, high technology (semiconductor, complex electronic equipment, computers, peripherals and consumer electronics, electronics contract manufacturing), oil and gas, professional services, public sector (national and local government, defense, justice and public safety), chemicals, industrial manufacturing (durable goods, heavy equipment and machinery manufacturing, industrial products), retail, telecom, education and research (higher education and research, k-12 primary and secondary education), life sciences (clinical applications, medical services, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology), travel and transportation (airlines, airports, logistics), financial services (banking, insurance, capital markets), media and entertainment, utilities (electricity, gas, water, waste), natural resources (raw material producers, mining, mill products), healthcare (health payers, health providers, government healthcare agencies). The future is looking so bright for Oracle!

To meet the new challenges, Web services link servers over the Internet to exchange data and combine information in new ways. These services run on Web-based severs instead of individual PCs, allowing people to use then through any device that has Internet access, including cellular phones and handheld computing gadgets, as well as desktop and notebook computers.

Oracle’s Siebel Mobile Solutions applications provide field technicians with complete mobile access to customer information, asset histories, reporting tools, parts information, corporate knowledge bases and much more. By supporting a large variety of devices in both connected and disconnected modes, it enables efficient and accurate customer service and ensures that all technicians have access to the right information in the right place at the right time.

Oracle’s Siebel Wireless will provide technicians more real-time access to critical service information, including activities, service requests, order status, account and contact details and an employee directory. And because it will be seamlessly integrated with other Oracle applications, it will be easily configurable and developed.

The main directions are:

-          Deliver real-time access to critical information through a wireless device

-          Wirelessly push messaged to employees, partners and customers

-          Support multiple handheld devices and phones.

Wireless Browser Support: Siebel Wireless provides real-time access to critical information through a wireless device. Using WML or HTML browser on a mobile phone or handheld device, a field user can read, edit and write data in the customer database. As a result, the application enables field professionals to order items, trace parts, send correspondence, update service activities, review customer and activity information, access calendar and contact details, and respond to service requests.

Siebel Handheld will allow field technicians to access key information from the customer database through Direct Server Synchronization or Companion Synchronization to a Windows Pocket PC device. Developers will connect to the Siebel Server using a variety of mediums to download and synchronize activities, service requests and other critical data.

Siebel Mobile Web Client enables field service professionals to access a full desktop computing solution on a laptop through an automatic exchange of information with corporate servers. It offers synchronization of laptop records with data over LANs, WANs, dial-up connections, and the Internet.

More than ever, developers need to be able to acquire, integrate, repurpose, and exchange information with other applications to feed their growing databases and to coordinate their business operations with those of partners and suppliers over the Web. These tasks can be dramatically simplified using XML.

Oracle is making a major commitment to XML, and the Core XML Support being delivered in Oracle11i is a major step. Oracle will continue to make it even easier to build database-driven Internet applications that exploit XML in future releases of Oracle, AppServer, Tools, and packaged Applications.

By more tightly integrating the SQL type system and XML, the database will provide a natural mapping of object/relational SQL query results to a well-formed XML document. Combining this tighter SQL? XML integration with the current Oracle mechanism for defining Object Views over relational data, it will be possible to query a logical view of “Accounts” and return all of the related, supporting information pertinent to that account with a single request to the database

Rather than receiving HTML pages that present schedules, price lists, and product information in an attractive visual format, XML allows to request and receive the raw data itself for further processing.

The number or Oracle’s certifications is growing constantly; there are more than 230000 with growth mainly in India and China. This means that Oracle’s future is really bright. There are many reasons to use a well-known oracle development team, a group of outstanding Oracle professionals with a dedication to quality and a reputation as an author and expert. Managers can create some development teams with confidence when it is composed of respected industry experts. The Oracle’s expert’s future is looking bright too…

The prospective are very optimistic; there are obstacles too, but managers can optimize the business value of Oracle. There are many obstacles to Oracle benefits realization but managers can use some “levers” to realize Oracle benefits using their existing people, processes, and organizations. There are specific tools and approaches for leveraging the possibilities of Oracle, including performance measurement, process improvement, organizational design, training (very important and expensive), and communications.

Oracle’s XML strategy is to deliver the best platform for developers to productively build and cost-effectively deploy reliable and scalable Internet applications exploiting XML. Oracle represents a significant “down payment” on the delivery of this strategy, and broad efforts are underway within Oracle to deliver additional XML capabilities up and down the product stack.

The main development directions are to assist Oracle analysts and design tools users in maximizing their investment in Oracle Designer and JDeveloper, through sharing experience with the other users and to ensure that Oracle customers are fully apprised of the future direction of Oracle analysis and design tools.

Oracle relies on its own software to run its global operations and meticulously plans software upgrades. There is an added complexity for Oracle: the company implements its software before releasing the new version to customers, so the pressure to get it right is overwhelming.

What made this possible is a foundation based on an integrated information model with a highly componentized application solution, with rich support for J2EE compliant APIs and Web services. It is a part of the latest evolution in the technology for designing and programming application software packages called Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). “In spite of this massive acquisition (PeopleSoft) in the middle our upgrade cycle we had a single place to upgrade, a single place to roll up processes, and without this architecture it would have been a very different story,” said David Cooke, Vice President and Global Oracle Alliance Leader.

Project Fusion is the next stage to bring together Oracle, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards product lines. This will bring all three product sets together using Java and HTML standards to make the new software easy to integrate into other systems.

“The future looks bright now: the new architecture and the results companies will achieve will be truly revolutionary, but the path to the new successor product line will be evolutionary”. (John Wookey, VP of application development at Oracle)

Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise applications are designed for the most complex business requirements. They provide web services integration with vendor and homegrown applications and can be easily configured and adapted to meet the most unique customer requirements. In addition, PeopleSoft Enterprise supports a very broad choice of technology infrastructure.

The future efforts are focused for:

1. Accelerate the path to Fusion
2. Drive superior ownership experience
3. Deliver best in-class business processes

The solution dynamically personalizes report information retrieved from PeopleSoft and other enterprises data sources and securely delivers individually formatted views to tens, of thousands of users inside and outside the firewall. The solution will integrate non-PeopleSoft data and the Management, Financial Management, Human Capital Management, Supply chain Management, and enterprise Performance Management by accessing them directly with Enterprise Information Integration, native PeopleSoft drivers, or through the AppConnect enterprise Warehouse.

The future solution will access PeopleSoft application data directly or through the data warehouse. It will be designed to integrate seamlessly with PeopleSoft applications and data including:

• PeopleSoft Security
• PeopleSoft Internet Architecture (PIA)

PeopleSoft data sources