Oracle Corporation is pleased to announce the production release of version 7.2 of the Oracle Rdb product family. All product family components are available for download from MetaLink. Now you can have the rock-solid availability, performance, disaster tolerance, security, and scalability for which Oracle Rdb is well known on your choice of Itanium-based or AlphaServer hardware. Nearly all Oracle Rdb-based applications running on OpenVMS Alpha systems today need only to be recompiled, linked and tested to run on Itanium-based servers.

Oracle Rdb release 7.2 is supported on the full range of OpenVMS certified Itanium-based server configurations from a single-processor rx1620 to a 16-processor Superdome. You can deploy on standalone or clustered Itanium-based servers or add Itanium-based database servers to your existing OpenVMS cluster of AlphaServer systems.

Oracle Rdb release 7.2 allows direct database access from multiple nodes in mixed-architecture clusters. Simultaneous access to the same database from AlphaServer and Itanium-based server systems within a cluster allows you to port your existing applications on your own schedule rather than forcing an "all-or-nothing" migration. These options give you maximum protection for production environments and permit you to migrate to lower cost commodity hardware when it makes sense for your business.

In addition to OpenVMS Itanium support, Oracle Rdb release 7.2 provides a number of new features and performance enhancements, including:

- Increased maximum number of database global buffers to reduce the I/O requirement of your workload
- Increased maximum database page and buffer size limits to retrieve and store more information with a single I/O
- Additional statistics screens and larger counter sizes to make monitoring your database even easier
- Streamlined internal instruction sequences for more efficient CPU use
- Improved caching of database AIP entry information for reduced I/O
- Index node pre-fetch performance optimizations to reduce I/O stall time
- Transaction rollback performance optimizations to reduce rollback time
- Encrypted database and after-image journal backups for protection of confidential data
- Query Optimizer enhancements for more efficient query execution strategies

With this release, all the components and features of Oracle Rdb are available for production use on both AlphaServer and Itanium-based server platforms. These components and features include:

- SQL interactive and dynamic interfaces
- SQL module language and precompilers
- RDO, RDBPRE and RDML precompilers
- Local and global buffering and row caches
Data protection and transaction integrity using before-image and after-image journaling
- Two-phase commit transactions supporting transactions that span multiple databases
- Remote database access via TCP/IP and DECnet
Data replication using Oracle Rdb Hot Standby, Oracle Rdb LogMiner and Replication Option for Rdb
- All Oracle RMU management tools for backing up, verifying, restoring and monitoring your database
- Oracle Trace for Rdb
- SQL/Services including support for Oracle Call Interface (OCI), and ODBC
- Oracle Rdb JDBC Drivers

Also, Oracle Rdb releases for AlphaServer systems continue to be available in two options: a generic kit that runs on any AlphaServer processor, and a platform-targeted performance kit that runs on AlphaServer EV56 and later processors.

Oracle Rdb release 7.2 requires OpenVMS Alpha version 8.2 or later or HP Open Industry Standard 64 for Integrity Servers version 8.2-1 or later.

The Oracle Rdb product family includes Oracle Rdb Enterprise Edition, Oracle CODASYL DBMS, Oracle CDD/Repository, Oracle SQL/Services, OCI Services for Oracle Rdb, Oracle Trace for Rdb, Replication Option for Rdb, Oracle Rdb ODBC Driver, and Oracle Rdb JDBC Drivers.

Additional information is available at the Oracle Rdb web site: http://www.oracle.com/rdb