Oracle Corp.s 9i technology suite is seeing growing—albeit cautious—support from partners that are developing tools to go with it.
BMC Software Inc. and Mercury Interactive Corp. are among a number of companies that will launch testing, development and management products for the Oracle database this week.
BMC will announce at the OpenWorld conference in San Francisco Patrol management software for Oracle9i Application Server and SQL Programmer for Oracle9i JDeveloper. The Houston company will also roll out Freebird, a tool for wireless database management.
Mercury, of Sunnyvale, Calif., will announce it has been selected by Oracle research and development and quality assurance groups to be their standard testing tool supplier for Oracle E-Business Suite. The partnership will expand in the first half of next year, likely with Oracle-specific tools, said Vincent Rerolle, Mercurys vice president of business development.
Compuware Corp. and Precise Software Solutions Ltd. will also announce new tools. Compuware, of Farmington Hills, Mich., will unveil DevPartner DB for Oracle, designed to isolate database performance problems. The company will also show OptimalJ, a tool for creating Java 2 Enterprise Edition code, and DevPartner Java Edition, a tool for fixing run-time performance and memory problems.
Precise, of Westwood, Mass., will introduce Precise/Savvy for Oracle, which is software for testing end-user response times on Web sites.
For Graham Jones, vice president of development at NDS Systems LC, in Clearwater, Fla., the testing tool barrage is welcome. NDS uses Oracle9i to run its own business of making vertical-market software and includes the databases application clustering with some of its products.
“Doing even an adequate job of proving that a new feature works is very difficult indeed,” Jones said. “We need all the help we can get because of the complexity.”
Also at OpenWorld, Dell Computer Corp. will announce preconfigured systems for Oracle9i on Microsoft Corp.s Windows 2000 Server and for 9is application clustering on Linux, said officials with the Round Rock, Texas, company. Customers will be able to buy licenses from Dell or Oracle. The units will ship domestically next month and globally a few months after.
Oracle, of Redwood Shores, Calif., also will announce support for Intel Corp.s IA-64 architecture.
