Oracle Partnership Mobilizes Database Lite

Oracle Corp. is partnering with Broadbeam Corp. to extend the reach of its Oracle Database Lite 10g Release 2.

Oracle, of Redwood Shores, Calif., this week will announce that its mobile database featuring integration with Broadbeams MSS (Mobile Systems Solution) ExpressQ is currently shipping. Customers will have to acquire both technologies separately to use the prebuilt interface between the two.

By activating MSS ExpressQ in tandem with Oracle Database Lite 10g Release 2 through a server configuration, customers can extend new device management capabilities to a variety of major devices, including laptops and PDAs that do not possess built-in SMS (Short Message Service) or proprietary message listener functionality, said Janet Boudris, CEO of Broadbeam, in Cranbury, N.J.

Oracles Database Lite 10g Release 2 supports the Symbian operating system. Click here to read more.

Boudris said the new partnership between Oracle and Broadbeam will allow mobile workers to compensate for unexpected coverage gaps or intermittent communications when moving between 802.11 and WAN deployments. This improvement will occur by more easily retrieving mobile device and software management information, as well as by synchronization with and deletion of mobile applications.

By using the message queuing capabilities within MSS ExpressQ, Oracle mobile database customers can store and forward device management commands and download or send updates—with delivery confirmation—as soon as they are within network reach.

Chris Bailey, head of business systems for The Automobile Association Ltd., in Basingstoke, England, is currently using Oracle Database Lite 9i as the repository for storing the organizations technical and diagnostic information. In conjunction with Oracles mobile database, MSS ExpressQ is deployed to power the communications aspect of AAs VIXEN (Vehicle Information crossed with an Electronic Notebook) project.

"Communication for our patrolmen is absolutely critical, as we deal with 4.5 million breakdowns a year on the roadside," said Bailey. "We have 15 million members of Automobile Association. What Broadbeam [coupled with Oracle] allowed us to do was integrate the command and control system, so the [VIXEN] application was then dynamically dispatching work from the call handlers that would take the breakdown detail, then send that info through to the PC or the route guidance unit."

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