OpenWorld Oracle has kicked its next major database out to developers for testing, with features intended to improve the lot of DBAs and information workers.

The Oracle Database 11g beta sees compression technology that can reduce the amount of storage required for data sets by up to two thirds, the ability to conduct upgrades online, and a speed boost allowing Oracle to finally beat file systems on reading data.

The 11g beta comes just over a year since 10g Release 2 and as Oracle adopts a data warehousing strategy that's less of an Oracle-only play.

Oracle last week bought extract, transform, load (ETL) and integration specialist Sunopsis whose technology will be integrated with Oracle's Warehouse Builder.

Sunopsis will allow Oracle users to build data warehouses connecting to systems such as Microsoft's MySQL and IBM's DB2 in their native language, while also using Oracle's own SQL and PL SQL. "Sunopsis provides a much simplified view of the world," Rozwat said.

Oracle is also improving security and compliance with the beta release of Database Vault, which provide a fine degree of provisioning across applications and services, and Audit Vault to build a warehouse of audit information.

In other show news, Oracle released its SOA Suite 10g Release 3, featuring single-click deployment. The suite also includes an enhanced multi-language enterprise service bus (ESB) and improved BPEL Process Manager with a new testing framework. SOA Suite 10g Release 3 starts at $50,000 per CPU.

On the cheaper side of the house, Oracle released the free Oracle Developer Depot for Oracle Application Server 10g. The offering provides a library of re-usable Java application code for developers that can be downloaded and deployed with a single click.

Oracle and Adobe also announced the ability to embed graphics, charts and animations built using Flash and AJAX in Oracle's Java portal - helping animate data in E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and Siebel. The companies are also working through the Java Community Process (JCP) to standardize integration of rich client data in Java portlets.®

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