When Larry Ellison launched the sixth edition of his company's database software, the flamboyant corporate chief hosted the fete aboard a Concorde plane to suggest the software's significantly ramped-up speed. On Tuesday, Ellison did that one step better at the Oracle8 debut in New York's Radio City Music Hall - he brought in a bolt of lightning.
Promoting the speed, security, and reliability of Oracle8 - already used by Amazon.com and stocksmart.com - Ellison promoted the much-improved server management capabilities and radical efficiency of the query application.
Ellison hopes the efficiency of new software outstrips the needs of even the largest businesses. Using four parallel Oracle servers, Ellison entered a thematic query through 1.6 Tbytes of information. The task, which took Oracle7 565 seconds and Oracle7.3 52 seconds, was completed in 11 seconds by Oracle8. "At an audited benchmark, that set a world record for complex queries," said Ellison, who went on to rib Microsoft for never submitting its database software to independent examination.
Ellison also conducted an email test with Oracle8's InterOffice database message system, sending a note to more than 50,000 users simultaneously logged onto the network. But with four Sun servers (with 22 microprocessors between them) running full-speed, it was difficult to distinguish the impressive celerity of the Oracle8 software from the brute force of the processors themselves.
In the new network computer architecture with application servers pumping information through data servers to thin clients, Oracle8 could be counted on to work - without acts of nature. In a moment of cheesy showmanship the Oracle chief directed a bolt of lightning at an application server to show that if it were "hit by lightning," Oracle8 would automatically reroute the connection, without any lag in use.
From the Wired News New York Bureau at FEED magazine.
