Oracle boosts Linux offerings

Oracle has boosted its Linux offerings in a bid to make a splash at the Linuxworld Conference taking place in New York this week.

Michael Rocha, senior vice president of Oracle's platform technologies division, said: "Linux is maturing into an enterprise-class operating system and its community is eager for vendors to bring Linux enterprise software products to new levels."

As a result, the company has introduced a Linux version of its Oracle Parallel Server (OPS) database, which will now be able to handle clusters comprising of up to four eight-way Linux-based machines.

Stacey Quandt, an analyst at Giga, said: "Although Oracle will not confirm the number of installed OPS users, it is believed that the number is low, judging from the lack of references, since OPS has been around for a few years on Unix and NT."

"So given the lack of reference deployments on these platforms, the technological near-term impact of extending this application to Linux is questionable. However, the long-term implications are promising as Linux matures," added Quandt.

The Oracle Internet File System enables developers to create and deploy content management packages and collaborative applications using programming languages such as Java. It also enables users to collaboratively edit and manage files over the internet.

Oracle has also made a Fast Start Kit available on its website, which includes technical overviews of the company's Linux offerings and a free trial sampler of Oracle 9i Application Server for Linux.