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Originally published at Internet.comThe flagship offering from the DB heavyweight Oracle Corp., Oracle Database 11g (g for Grid) supports the largest deployments and lists as its primary competitors IBM DB2 and Microsoft SQL Server.
Like those competitors' offerings, 11g is provided in multiple editions depending on the strength and capacity needed by the end user. Oracle Database Standard Edition One supports usage on up to 2 CPU sockets; Standard Edition supports usage on up to 4 CPU sockets; and Enterprise Edition is supported on an unlimited number of sockets. The vendor states that all of the editions are built using a common code base, allowing database applications to scale up through the editions without changing the code.
Primary differences between the Standard and Enterprise Editions pertain to scale, and the availability of options to deal with large scale deployments. For example, The Standard Edition does not support Oracle Data Guard (allowing for the creation and management of standby databases, among other things) nor does it support Virtual Private DBs or Oracle Streams (enables the propagation and management of data, transactions and events in a data stream either within a database, or from one database to another); all of which are standard in the Enterprise version. A key notable exception is support for Real Application Clusters (more below) provided by default in SE (not SE One) but a separate option in the Enterprise Edition.
Multiple, separately available, optional product enhancements are available for Oracle Database 11g, most targeted primarily to the Enterprise Edition. Oracle Partitioning, for example, allows for the breaking up of large tables into smaller, more manageable pieces (while still retaining the ability to access the table as a single entity from applications); and Oracle's Real Application Clusters allows for the grouping of servers such that they are able to share processing load amongst themselves in a transparent mode; i.e., without requiring changes to the applications using the DB. Real Application Clusters provide for both load balancing and failover, while allowing for the strengthening of the overall system horsepower by adding additional servers to the cluster.
Other Enterprise Edition options include Warehouse Builder, Database Vault, Management Packs, Oracle Spatial, and more.
Among several key new features in 11g are:
- Real Application Testing, which allows for the capture and replay of real workloads along with SQL performance analysis for the testing of application changes
- The ability to use Data Guard-based standby DBs as simultaneous, read-only DBs for offload of production processes
- Oracle Total Recall, enabling the querying of designated tables as of a specified point-in-time in the past
- Oracle Flashback Transaction, allowing admins to back out a transaction made in error (including dependent transactions)
- Hot patching, allowing DB patches to be applied without shutting down the DB
- Support for binary XML in XML DB
- Enhancements for transparent encryption, including support for entire tables, indexes, and large objects (LOBs) stored in the DB
- Query Result Caches (cache and reuse of often called queries and functions)
- Partitioning and compression enhancements
11g is now available for Linux.
Visit the Oracle Corp. Web site for further information.Author: DatabaseJournal Staff
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