Source Name : Yahoo! News

Microsoft has confirmed it will release the first pre-beta version of Windows 7 to developers next month. Windows 7 is the next major version of the Windows client operating system.

Developers will get their first look at an alpha version of the operating system at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October. Microsoft plans to demonstrate its progress on Windows 7 at the annual event. But the operating system itself won't debut in retail stores until 2010.



"With Windows 7 at PDC2008, you will see advances across the full range of Windows -- including the kernel, networking, hardware and devices, and user interface," wrote Denise Begley, a marketing manager for Microsoft, on the company blog. "Additionally, attendees will have the opportunity to attend 21 different sessions that drill down into the details of developing for Windows 7."

Microsoft Stays the Course

The fact that Microsoft is putting a pre-beta into developers' hands signals that Redmond is on track for its 2010 Windows 7 release, according to Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

"Microsoft is going to be using the same kernel as Vista, which is a very wise decision. Deciding to rewrite the kernel for Vista was one of the issues that reportedly delayed that project significantly," King said. "Trying to start all over with a brand-new kernel for Windows 7 would not have been a great idea."

What's more, analysts said working with the Vista kernel should avoid most, if not all, the compatibility problems Vista users experienced out of the box. Even if Windows 7 doesn't wow consumers and businesses, King said, it will nonetheless be far more stable and cause far fewer problems with users than Vista initially did.

"Innovation is great, but a seamless user experience is very important, too, and maybe more important," King said. "Vista demonstrated that even when you try to do everything right, things can go very, very badly. Microsoft is doing everything it can to make sure the user and developer experience with Windows 7 is light-years ahead of what it was with Vista."

A Touchscreen PC Future

Microsoft's last public demonstration, which took place in May at the D: All Things Digital conference, raised more questions than answers. Windows 7 will tout multi-touch technology that lets fingers draw rudimentary images. The first demo also included navigating an online map to find a nearby Starbucks. Microsoft figures the technology is a natural for image editing and navigation.

But analysts were critical, saying the demo was short, and the company failed to address questions about the underlying technology in Windows 7. Still, Microsoft is touting the possibilities of touchscreen technology on a PC.

The May showing saw demonstrations that included the ability to slide your finger along the screen to navigate. To zoom in, you simply spread your fingers. A video of the demonstration showed a piano keyboard being played by touching the keys on-screen, suggesting new possibilities for digital-music applications.

During this week's Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison unveiled two new products for data-warehousing applications. Called the Database Machine and the Exadata Storage Server, both offerings meld standard hardware from Hewlett Packard with Oracle's business software.

The new HP Oracle Database Machine, which is packaged in a single rack that can be ordered as a complete system, integrates a grid of Oracle database servers with a grid comprised of Oracle's new Exadata Storage Servers, each of which integrates two InfiniBand pipes capable of delivering 1GB/sec of data to the database grid.

"This is the most dramatic announcement in storage in a decade, and could have the effect of significantly lowering total cost of ownership and improving performance across database applications of all kinds," said Andrew Reichman, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. "If they can deliver on their promises, all the major storage vendors should be watching their backs."

Minimizing Data Movement

Though each Exadata Storage Server can be equipped with up to 12TB of raw storage, Ellison said the new offering is much more "than a bunch of dumb disk drives." It's intelligent, he said, because the platform integrates two Intel quad-core processors.

"This allows us to put intelligence right next to every disk drive in the storage system to reduce the amount of data that flows across that interconnect between the storage servers and the database servers," he said.

Exadata is designed to eliminate performance bottlenecks by shipping less data through larger pipes. "We've taken a tremendous burden off of the interconnect between the storage grid and the database grid by returning selected query results rather than all the disk blocks," Ellison said.

Oracle's new storage server also employs a massively parallel architecture and smart storage software to offload data-intensive query processing from Oracle Database 11g Servers. Instead, query processing is performed closer to the data, which minimizes data movement through higher bandwidth connections.

Partnering with HP

Aimed at customers who don't want to configure their own grid, interconnect, storage servers, and software, the new Database Machine incorporates a grid of eight database servers featuring 64 Intel processor cores, together with a second grid of 14 Exadata Storage Servers that can collectively support up to 168TB of raw storage. According to Oracle, the integrated platform is capable of delivering up to 10 times faster performance than current-generation Oracle data warehouses.

"We have 64 Intel cores for database processing and another 112 Intel cores for storage-server processing," Ellison said. "And that's a lot of compute power in one box."

Empowered by oracle enterprise linux, the Database Machine comes preconfigured, pretuned and certified for Oracle's Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition tools and Real Application Clusters. Exadata Storage Servers also can be ordered separately by customers with the data warehouse who want the product's storage enhancements.

One advantage of the hardware technology that Hewlett Packard is supplying to Oracle is that it is completely open, noted Mark Hurd. "It integrates standard storage technology and we are bringing it through our standard manufacturing and supply chain," HP's chief executive said.

Source Name : Yahoo! News

Summary :
Reuters - Oracle Corp moved to reassure investors that its business management software unit is healthy, even after sales dropped sharply in its most-recent quarter, telling investors it will catch up with bigger rival SAP AG .

SAN FRANCISCO/BOSTON (Reuters) - Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) moved to reassure investors that its business management software unit is healthy, even after sales dropped sharply in its most-recent quarter, telling investors it will catch up with bigger rival SAP AG (SAPG.DE).
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"We expect to catch them since we are growing so much faster than they are," Oracle President Safra Catz said at a financial analyst meeting in San Francisco.

Oracle, the world's third-largest software maker, last week reported that sales of business management software dropped 12 percent to $331 million in its fiscal first quarter ended August 31. The company and some analysts downplayed the decline, noting that they had risen 36 percent in the fourth quarter.

Business management software, or applications programs, helps companies manage tasks such as accounting, sales activities, inventory control, manufacturing and human resources.

SAP has long been the world's biggest maker of such programs, but Oracle has been boosting its share of the market through a string of acquisitions, including its purchases of PeopleSoft and Siebel.

(Reporting by Eric Auchard in San Francisco and Jim Finkle in Boston)