Oracle Corp, the largest provider of software for e-business, says it has resolved the challenge of integrating the often fragmented middleware products that run e-business applications.
The Oracle9i Application Server, Oracle`s third major application server update in the past year, is able to replace more than 10 separate point products from other vendors, offering built-in enterprise portal software, high-speed caching, business intelligence, rapid application development, application and business integration, Web and other services in a single offering, says Francois Marais, Oracle product manager (Tools).
It is targeted at the rapidly growing J-Developer or JAVA developer environment. "Based on open standards, it allows developers to address Windows, Linux, HP and other operating systems without the need to change code," he says. "In addition, users are not limited to the Oracle database platform. By leveraging gateway technology they have the opportunity to develop on a variety of environments, he says.
Marais believes Oracle`s extensive investment in application server research and development has facilitated the server`s benchmark performance.
"This new lightweight JAVA J2EE-based engine features extended caching capabilities that allow companies to minimise infrastructure costs by scaling through the use of a software instead of hardware," he says.
According to Marais, Java has made significant progress in establishing itself as the de facto standard for application development and deployment for the Internet.
"The full Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) certification combined with the Oracle9i Application Server performance and scalablity enhancements enable Oracle to provide developers with the latest standards and technology, while giving companies a scalable, performance-orientated platform on which to run and grow their e-business initiatives."
Marais adds that Oracle is focused on giving customers everything they need to run their business-critical Web sites and applications. "Our goal is to assist users to reduce hardware costs while integrating applications more economically," he notes.
Oracle9IAS turns `small` into `scalable`
Java`s portability and productivity, while offering tremendous benefits to developers, has generally required significant computing resources for deployment. To address this problem, Oracle has focused on delivering the industry`s lightest, most efficient J2EE server - the Oracle9iAS.
As part of this effort, Oracle licensed high performance J2EE technology from IronFlare, a Swedish company, and integrated it into the Oracle9iAS. With this compact new Java engine, Oracle9iAS offers a significantly lighter memory footprint, just 20 Megabytes of RAM, compared to up to 512MB of RAM from other vendors.
In addition to smaller disk requirements, the new Oracle9iAS has been optimised for extremely fast Java code execution. In tests conducted by Oracle, Oracle9iAS consistently outperformed other leading application servers on performance measurements running Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), Java servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP).
Oracle also tested a variety of different applications and various transactional JSP applications. On average, the results showed that Oracle9iAS ran two to four times faster than other popular application servers.
To enable developers to experience the new Oracle9iAS and do their own benchmarking, Oracle provides a free download of the new Oracle9iAS containers for Java. It will also be posting test application code and detailing the performance results of its own tests on the Oracle Technology Network Web site.
In addition to the Java performance and scalability improvements, the new version of Oracle9i Application Server is enhanced by the following new features:
Comprehensive Integration Infrastructure that links applications, data, and partners, enabling organizations to integrate and optimise Internet business processes. New integration features in Oracle9iAS, including automated business flows, business process-driven integration, adapters for third-party packaged applications, support for emerging Web services initiatives and enhanced systems management enable e-businesses to realise the full potential of their business applications while reducing reliance on costly tools and consulting services.
SOAP Support for Web Services.
Support for Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) allows customers to access and invoke dynamic Web services through Oracle9iAS. The de-facto standard protocol for Web services transport, SOAP provides a mechanism to exchange XML documents and data over the Internet, and to publish information and application functionality as Web services. Oracle developers can take advantage of the SOAP support in Oracle9iAS and the powerful XML programming features in Oracle JDeveloper to build and deploy Web services that can be accessed from intranets or the Internet.
ESI-Enabled Caching. With support for Edge Side Includes (ESI), a proposed open industry standard for dynamic Web content caching, Oracle9iAS enables dynamic Java applications to serve up to 85 times more users than would be possible on the same hardware without ESI-enabled caching. This means customers can save significantly on the hardware infrastructure required to run dynamic, high-volume Web sites. Oracle9iAS is the first application server in the industry to provide support for ESI.
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