"Oracle Database 11g continues the focus on Grid computing by enabling grids of low-cost servers and storage to deliver fast, scalable and reliable data processing, supporting the toughest data warehousing, transaction processing, and content management, environments", stated Andy Mendelsohn, senior vice president of Database Server Technologies, Oracle.

To provide customers with increased capabilities to help meet their broad range of data management needs, Oracle also introduced four new options for Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition:

• Oracle Real Application Testing;
• Oracle Advanced Compression;
• Oracle Total Recall; and,
• Oracle Active Data Guard.

Many organisations want to take advantage of database and operating system upgrades, and also make hardware and system changes to meet the needs of the business. Oracle Real Application Testing helps customers reduce the time, risk and cost of testing such changes in their IT environment, in a controlled, cost-effective manner.

New compression capabilities for all types of data mean that compression ratios of 2x to 3x or more can now be achieved with Oracle Advanced Compression. Coupled with new partitioning capabilities, Oracle Advanced Compression can be used to deploy Information Lifecycle Management strategies in the database without application changes, further reducing overall storage requirements.

Oracle Total Recall enables administrators to easily maintain historical archives of changed data for compliance and business intelligence. Oracle Total Recall provides a secure, efficient, easy-to-use and application-transparent solution for long-term access to changed data.

Oracle Active Data Guard can be used to enhance the performance of production databases by offloading resource intensive operations such as queries and backups to a single physical standby database. So the return on investment for a physical standby database is greatly increased as it can be used for both disaster protection and enhancing the overall quality of service of the production environment.

Beyond these new options, Oracle Database 11g also delivers a broad range of new features and enhancements to improve enterprise information management. Oracle Database 11g features improved file storage performance, increased security functionality, significant performance enhancements to Oracle XML DB, enhanced OLAP and data warehousing capabilities, and others.

Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition, Standard Edition and Standard Edition One are generally available today on Linux x86. A free evaluation version of Oracle Database 11g on Linux x86 is available for download on Oracle Technology Network. Terms, conditions, and restrictions apply.

Pricing for Oracle Database 11g editions and existing options remains unchanged. The following new Oracle Database 11g Enterprise Edition options are priced as follows:

• Oracle Real Application Testing - $10,000 per processor or $200 per named user;
• Oracle Advanced Compression - $10,000 per processor or $200 per named user;
• Oracle Total Recall - $5000 per processor or $100 per named user; and,