Boldly going where no database has gone before, Oracle's Oracle8i Release 3 is a lot more than a database. Oracle8i is now also a file, mail, Web and Java2 Enterprise Edition application server.

Oracle's development teams are backing up Larry Ellison's mantra of fewer, bigger servers, and it's up to customers now to decide if they want to put all their faith in the Oracle gospel or keep a more widely distributed, heterogeneous architecture for their most critical IT services.

The big news in this release is the new file- and Web-serving additions. Although Oracle's database engine itself has changed little from previous releases, it's still true that only IBM's DB2 can compete with Oracle8i's breadth of database functionality.

Oracle8i's biggest weakness in this area is its lack of an included OLAP (online analytical processing) server for ad hoc analysis queries, something both IBM and Microsoft now provide with their databases (Microsoft also now includes data mining).

Oracle8i started shipping in late spring and was available for Solaris, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Linux operating systems in November. Support for other platforms will follow in the next few months.

In our tests, Oracle8i's IFS (Internet File System) was the clear standout in terms of strategically valuable product changes. Having set up and used the product ourselves, we think it's a brilliant and original product idea and will make content and file management on large file systems much easier -- in a future release.

Using the product's Web interface or simply a mapped Windows drive, we were able to copy files both to and from IFS.

IFS has to do better than a normal file server to be interesting, and it does. We could save point-in-time versions of files to later revert to an older version, and create links to files that continued to work when source files were moved, renamed or deleted by another user. It's highly programmable and has great built-in XML (Extensible Markup Language) support.

IFS' biggest weakness is its lack of directory integration, even with Oracle8i's own user list. With no LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), Windows domain authentication or even user-list import tools, IFS is a land unto itself, a failing that, in a single stroke, makes the mail server features of IFS unusable for most organisations.

We also couldn't apply file permission changes recursively, a key maintenance feature, and IFS is very resource-intensive. With all of its components running, the product used more than 200MB of RAM.

Performance is also a big question mark for us, especially with a file system product. Oracle officials refused to support our request to quantify IFS' overhead vs. a file server baseline, telling us the product was too new (as a 1.x release) to handle comparative performance testing. Caveat emptor.

It's in Oracle's favour that the database now offers so much because Oracle8i is significantly more expensive than any other database option. Oracle8i Release 3 Enterprise Edition, the version we tested, costs AU$286.50 per CPU megahertz on RISC chips such as Sun's SPARC chips, and AU$191 per CPU megahertz on Intel-compatible chips.

Oracle sells a lower-end Oracle8i Standard Edition which is AU$29 per CPU megahertz on Intel platforms, includes IFS.

Organisations doing Web development will find more features and better integration between components in this release and what competitors offer. With new Web server and file server components, centralisation is what this release is all about, and organisations that want to consolidate servers will find Oracle8i Release 3 paves the way.

Short-term Business Impact:
Integration with Apache Web server provides an easy way to serve up Web content using Oracle.
Long-term Business Impact:
IFS in Oracle8i Release 3 provides a fundamentally new and attractive way to store files and manage content.

Pros:
IFS adds file-sharing and mail server features to the database; new Web server and built-in JavaServer Pages and Java servlet support; fine-grained security and strong XML features.
Cons: No OLAP server included; very high purchase cost; still the most complicated server database to manage, tune and administer; IFS lacks LDAP support.

Oracle8i Release 3
Company: Oracle
Ph: 1300 366 386
Price: Standard Edition AU$29 per CPU megahertz;
Enterprise Edition AU$286.50 per CPU megahertz on RISC chips, volume discounts available; AU$191 per CPU megahertz on Intel chips.

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