News
Oracle 11g Ships, But New Features Cost Extra
- By Jeffrey Schwartz
- August 14, 2007
The recently launched Oracle 11g database server is now shipping but today's
release announcement came with a twist: Some of the new features come at an
additional cost.
Oracle took
the wraps off its next-generation database at an event in New York last
month, saying that the first iteration would ship this quarter for Linux. Company
officials at the time indicated that the Windows version should follow a quarter
later, or by year's end.
The company today declined to comment on the status of the Windows version,
which is in beta. Oracle 11g for Windows will boast integration
with Microsoft's Visual Studio tool suite.
Also, in a recent white paper (download the PDF here),
the company said the Windows version will employ a native, thread-based Windows
service model and will more tightly integrate with the operating system.
For those running Oracle on Windows, 11g will offer support for large-memory
and grid computing. It will support both 32- and 64-bit Windows including Vista,
X64-based hardware (client and server) and Intel's Windows-based Itanium server
platform.
But the big news today, as mentioned, centers on pricing. Oracle 11g Standard
Edition, which allows up to 300 named users, starts at $3,300, while Enterprise
Edition is priced at $8,800 for 800 named users. A complete price list is available
here.
Some of the key new features of the database are as follows:
- Real Application Testing consists of two components. The first is
Database Replay, which lets DBAs test, capture and run actual production workloads
when executing such tasks as patches and changes to schemas, configuration,
storage, network and operating systems. The second component is SQL Performance
Analyzer (SPA), which lets developers test the impact of environmental changes.
A white paper on RAT is available from Oracle here
(PDF). RAT costs $10,000 per processor or $200 per named user.
- Advanced Compression, designed to reduce database storage requirements
by two or three times, is priced at $10,000 per processor or $200 per named
user.
- Oracle Total Recall, which lets DBAs maintain archives of changed
data for those with compliance requirements, is $5,000 per processor or $100
per named user.
- Active Data Guard, a module that provides monitoring, management
and automation for data protection and disaster recovery, is priced at $5,000
per processor.
About the Author
Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.