Oracle buying Tekelec for network signaling software
Oracle is filling out its product stack for communications with the acquisition of Tekelec, which provides network signaling, policy control and subscriber data management software for mobile data networks. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the first half of this year, were not disclosed.
The explosive growth of smartphones and mobile services has put new strains on mobile networks, and Tekelec's products can help providers manage these workloads as well as optimize profits, according to its website.
Oracle plans to roll Tekelec's capabilities into its communications product portfolio and will combine them with products gained through the pending acquisition of network equipment vendor Acme Packet, according to a statement. Read more...
Oracle ports DTrace to Oracle Linux
Oracle has ported one of its most coveted Solaris tools to the Linux platform, a real-time debugging tool called DTrace, though the company has made it officially available only for its own Oracle Linux distribution.
With the release of Oracle Linux 6.4, Oracle announced that participants in its Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN) -- available with a paid Oracle support license -- can download a copy of DTrace for Linux.
Many Linux developers and administrators have pined for a version of DTrace to run on Linux, a few even citing DTrace -- along with the ZFS (Zettabyte File System) -- as a major reason for not moving from Solaris to Linux. Red Hat's SystemTap, among other alternatives, duplicates some of DTrace's functionality for Linux, but doesn't offer the same level of granularity. Read more...
Oracle brings cross-platform Java dev to mobile devices
Oracle is augmenting its Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) to allow developers to create mobile applications for Apple and Android devices.
The advantage the newly released ADF Mobile will offer is that a developer can write an application once and have it run with no modification on either the Apple iOS on Android.
"You don't have to learn different languages to deploy on different platforms," said Bill Pataky, Oracle vice president of product management. "We abstracted away the differences of the devices and paneled them in the framework."
This extension to ADF probably wouldn't be suitable for the weekend developer hoping to make the next version of "Angry Birds," Pataky said. Instead, this product is suited for helping developers extend their ADF and non-ADF enterprise Java applications to mobile platforms. "Any Web application, including a website, can be integrated into the mobile application," he said. Read more...
Oracle Linux honcho ‘personally hurt’ by Red Hat clone claims
Oracle has taken its share of knocks for marketing a version of Linux that's package-for-package compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), but according to Oracle senior engineering veep Wim Coekaerts, Oracle Linux's reputation as a copycat is entirely undeserved.
"I often read things on Slashdot or blogs where folks think that we're proprietary and we just take the code and don't contribute back," Coekaerts said during an Oracle OpenWorld conference session in San Francisco on Tuesday. "It really hurts me personally, because we actually do a lot of really good stuff. All the work we do goes back to Linux. We're really in it to make Linux better and not just copy."
Coekaerts argued that although Red Hat markets a Linux distribution that's put together a specific way, it has no exclusive rights to the code for the various software packages that make up that distribution. Read more...
Larry couldn’t, but we can: Upstart Waratek touts cloudy Java love
A startup has pledged to deliver for Java what the brains of Larry Ellison’s mighty Oracle and the entire Java community cannot: cloud scalability - now.
It also hopes to spread the love to Java-hating sysadmins.
Waratek is planning the general release of its Cloud VM for Java at JavaOne next week. The Cloud VM product is a virtualisation engine built by Waratek to deliver multi-tenancy and elasticity for Java apps. It will also release APIs that let you build for Cloud VM for Java at the event.
Cloud VM introduces Waratek’s substrate layer into the Java container that controls the memory and CPU allocation given to each and every Java app. The idea is to make Java less of a resource hog and easier to manage. Read more...
Oracle seeks to delay cloud features in enterprise Java
Oracle is finding its road map for enterprise Java is a bit too ambitious, with the company now proposing a postponement in cloud computing capabilities that had been anticipated for Java EE (Java Platform, Enterprise Edition) 7 next year. Instead, the cloud capabilities would be included in Java EE 8 in 2015.
In a blog post, Oracle's Linda DeMichiel cites slow progress in developing cloud technologies due to immaturity in the provisioning, multitenancy, and elasticity spaces, as well as in application deployments. Providing solid support for standardized PaaS (platform as a service) programming and multitenancy would delay Java EE 7 until spring 2014, more than a year behind schedule, she said. "In our opinion, that is way too long," said DeMichiel, who has served as Java EE 7 specification lead. Read more...
Oracle backtracks from Java EE 7 cloud claims
In a move that's becoming all too familiar, leaders of the effort to develop Java EE 7 – the next version of Oracle's Java platform for enterprise computing – have recommended that certain planned components be deferred to a later version in the interest of keeping the project on schedule.
"Despite our best intentions, our progress has been slow on the cloud side of our agenda," Linda DeMichiel, the specification lead for Java EE 7, wrote in a blog post. She added that providing solid support for platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environments and multi-tenancy would likely delay the project for another year.
"We have therefore proposed to the Java EE 7 Expert Group that we adjust our course of action — namely, stick to our current target release dates, and defer the remaining aspects of our agenda for PaaS enablement and multi-tenancy support to Java EE 8," DeMichiel wrote. Read more...
IBM and Oracle present rival chips for ‘big iron’ servers
IBM and Oracle shared more details this week about new RISC chips they're building for server customers, the Power7+ in the case of IBM and the T5 for Oracle.
The Unix server market continues to contract as x86-based systems gain more capabilities, but the Unix category still generated US$2.3 billion in revenue last quarter, or about one-fifth of the overall server market, according to IDC. And if there's money to be made, vendors will keep investing, at least for the time being.
IBM's new, eight-core Power7+, expected before the end of the year, is being manufactured on a 32-nanometer process, compared with 45 nanometers for the Power7. The more advanced process enables smaller transistors, which means IBM could fit several new features on the chip while keeping it about the same size. Read more...
Security pros advise users to ditch Java
Security firms are being none too gentle with Oracle's Java following the revelation this week that attackers are using two unpatched Java vulnerabilities to compromise selected targets. The most common advice: Uninstall the Java plug-in in your browser and don't use services that require the software.
On Monday, security firm FireEye revealed that a customer had been attacked with a previously unknown vulnerability. Yet Oracle already knew about the security issue and apparently had an update at the ready to be released on its regularly scheduled patch day in October. With reliable exploits for the vulnerabilities rapidly being adopted by security researchers and cyber criminals alike, the company rushed out a fix for the flaw on Thursday.
Overall, the incident has left a bitter taste in the collective mouths of many security professionals. Read more...
6 London boroughs haul all their kit to 1 Oracle biz product
Six London boroughs intend to generate £6m savings from a plan to implement the same version of Oracle's E-Business Suite.
The boroughs - Barking and Dagenham, Brent, Lambeth, Lewisham, Havering and Croydon - will implement Oracle EBS Release 12 as part of a plan to support the introduction of HR, finance, payroll, pensions and procurement functionality as part of Project Athena. The project is aimed at implementing and converging IT and business processes across London to save costs.
The councils have jointly appointed Capgemini to implement Oracle R12, which is a single system that manages HR, finance, payroll and procurement functions.
Using EBS means that employees are able to request leave, pay for services and manage budgets though a single system instead of using several systems or spreadsheets. Read more...
Oracle hurls MySQL at Microsoft database wobblers
Migration tools come and go in the turf wars between the enterprise vendors.
Over the years we’ve had Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange migration tools and tools to swap one company’s database for another.
Under the latter category, Oracle is now throwing open source at Microsoft in the form of a migration tool to shift users off of Redmond’s latest database.
Oracle new migration tools will move data from Microsoft SQL Server to MySQL, which Oracle bought from Sun. The tools come as part of the MySQL Workbench.
Oracle claimed the migration tool would also shift database tables and data to MySQL and “quickly” convert existing apps. Read more...
Oracle hopes to poach Microsoft SQL Server users with MySQL migration tool
Oracle is going after users of Microsoft's SQL Server with a new tool for migrating data from SQL Server to its own MySQL database, the vendor announced Wednesday.
The tool has been built into Oracle's MySQL Workbench administration console, and with it, applications written for SQL Server can be easily tweaked for MySQL, Oracle said in a statement.
Oracle is also releasing an improved version of the MySQL Installer for Windows environments, as well as a new MySQL Notifier for Windows tool that "helps developers and DBAs to easily monitor, start and stop their MySQL database instances, with the Microsoft SQL Server look and feel," Oracle said. Read more...
Oracle NetBeans equipped with static analysis
For the newest release of NetBeans, Oracle has equipped the open-source IDE (integrated development environment) to continuously run a static analysis tool, which could point out possible coding errors to developers as they write their programs.
NetBeans 7.2, released Tuesday, also includes performance improvements and support for the latest languages and associated technologies.
For this release, NetBeans includes FindBugs, a static analysis tool for Java programs. Static analysis inspects program code for possible errors or defects, reporting errors and suggesting possible fixes to the developer. A popular debugger, FindBugs has been downloaded more than 2 million times, its creators estimate. Developers will be able to scan their applications to identify coding problems, getting the results directly within the IDE. FindBugs has long been offered as a plug-in, but this is the first version of NetBeans to include the software as part of its core package, according to Oracle. Read more...
Oracle lowers the flag on Fortress language project
Oracle is shuttering the long-running Fortress programming language research project, in the database giant's latest move to divest itself of the less-profitable pieces of Sun Microsystems' software portfolio.
"After working nearly a decade on the design, development, and implementation of the Fortress programming language, the Oracle Labs Programming Language Research Group is now winding down the Fortress project," writes Guy Steele of the Oracle Labs programming language research group.
Fortress is an experimental programming language designed to make it easier to write software for modern, highly parallel computing environments. Its early research was funded in part by the same DARPA high-performance computing project that produced the Chapel and X10 languages.
Its design was influenced by Fortran, Java, and many other languages – and it runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) – but Fortress has a unique syntax that resembles mathematical notation, the native language of computer science. Read more...
Oracle scales back plans for Java 8
Oracle is moving to drop a major component from its upcoming Java 8 release, in an effort to get the flagging Java development process back on track.
The component, known as Project Jigsaw, was an addition to the language that would have allowed Java developers to write and distribute programs as modules. It would also have made it easier to scale the Java platform to more types of hardware, ranging from large servers to small embedded devices.
On Tuesday, Mark Reinhold, chief architect of the Java platform group at Oracle, wrote in a blog post that despite repeated promises that Project Jigsaw would be included in Java 8, it is no longer feasible to have the technology ready in time for that version's planned September 2013 ship date.
"Steady progress is being made, but some significant technical challenges remain," Reinhold writes. "There is, more importantly, not enough time left for the broad evaluation, review, and feedback which such a profound change to the Platform demands." Read more...