Oracle Brings ‘Dot-Com Suite’ to Linux

At the opening of the LinuxWorld Conference in New York City this week, database titan Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) expanded its investment in Linux by announcing that its e-commerce enabling dot-com Suite is now available for the open-source operating system.

According to Oracle, over half of the Oracle8i downloads from its Oracle Technology Network (OTN) currently are for Linux, outpacing downloads of Oracle8i for Windows NT. Additionally, it said that 75 percent of Oracle Application Server’s downloads from OTN are for Linux.

Oracle’s dot-com package, aimed at online business start-ups, includes, in addition to Oracle8i, several products previously unavailable for the Linux platform. The new Linux suite will include versions of the Oracle Application Server and Oracle WebDB for portal development, both designed to run on Linux.

“With Oracle dot-com Suite for Linux, Oracle offers the three important facets of starting and growing Internet-based businesses — low initial cost, use of popular, standard Internet technology, and Internet-strength scalability and reliability,” commented Jeremy Burton, vice president of Internet platform marketing for Oracle.

Oracle’s Application Server for Linux will provide developers with support for Java2, including Java Servlets and Enterprise JavaBeans. The new WebDB 2.2 product will enable them to build Enterprise Portals with improved file share capabilities for users.

Both products, released for the first time on Linux, will be freely available to developers from OTN.

The Oracle of Linux

The Oracle8i for Linux product was released in mid-1999, and came after “a successful early adopter’s program,” according to Oracle, with over 50,000 downloads of the product from OTN.

“Oracle is committed to bringing superior technology to the Linux community,” stated Chuck Rozwat, senior vice president of server technologies for Oracle at the time. “Oracle8i on Linux comes with both Java and XML built right in,” and “together they offer the most cost-effective way to deploy scalable Internet applications.”

About Linux

Linux is a UNIX-based operating system that was created largely through a collaborative process over the Internet. The finding of fact issued in the Microsoft antitrust case, and high profile IPOs for vendor Red Hat and 8VA Linux Systems have significantly propelled Linux into the mainstream, making it more of a viable alternative to Windows.