November 17, 1999 Web posted at: 10:16 a.m. EST (1516 GMT) by John Cox

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LOS ANGELES (IDG) -- Oracle this week is using its annual customer conference to showcase new products and services that are part of the database company's ongoing effort to remake itself into an Internet software firm.

Although the Oracle8i database remains central to the company's strategy, Oracle is complementing that product with specialized servers and with a growing number of new products and services aimed at helping customers switch to an electronic business model -- buying, selling and sharing corporate data via the Internet.

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Oracle says the next version of its database, Oracle8i Release 2, will be generally available in December. The first major update since 8i was released in March. Version 2.0 will include the following additions:

• A set of analytical functions for data warehousing applications.
• Full support for the Java2 specification, along with remote debugging of Java applications, and a Java XML parser to read and write data in XML format.
• Oracle Enterprise Manager 2.1, which is a Web-based management system. The new version adds support for managing 12 new subsystems, including Oracle Parallel Server, Oracle interMedia and Oracle Applications.
• Faster failover performance in conjunction with Oracle Parallel Server.
• Faster overall database performance.

According to Oracle, 5,000 companies have bought the initial 8i release.

As previously reported in Network World, Oracle also unveiled the Oracle Integration Server (OIS). OIS is new application messaging software that lets back-end applications share data with each other and with Web-based applications.

OIS translates data from one application's format into documents that use XML. Then, the server routes the XML document, and retranslates it into the format understood by the receiving application. No changes have to be made to existing programs.

OIS will be available by March. Pricing has not been finalized.

Oracle also went live with Oracle Exchange, an online marketplace where businesses can buy and sell products and services. Oracle server software forms the backbone of Exchange, but companies using Exchange don't need to buy any Oracle products.

Although Oracle software makes Exchange possible, executives were not available to explain whether, or how, Oracle itself makes money from the project.

Also unveiled was a deal between Oracle and Hewlett-Packard to incorporate the Oracle8i Lite database, for handheld devices, into HP's Chai Appliance Platform.

Chai is a set of Java programs, including a Java Virtual Machine written by HP, designed for use in handheld and embedded computing devices. Chai will let developers build and run Java applications on these devices, while 8i Lite will let the applications store and manage data as well as copy data between the device and network data servers.

Neither company revealed when this integration would be accomplished.

In other news, Oracle and Linux vendor Red Hat announced plans for an upcoming version of Red Hat Linux that will have new features for clustering servers, for large memory utilization and for a large file system. The companies are also working to integrate Java into Red Hat Linux.

All the planned changes will be delivered free to the open source code user community under the GNU General Public License for Linux. The new version will be available in mid-December.