Oracle Corp. last week rolled out its biggest database upgrade of the last five years, but it didn't take center stage.

Instead of highlighting Oracle8, Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison focused on how the company's products will gravitate around the Web-based, open- standards, thin-client computing architecture called NCA (Network Computing Architecture).

The NC client will offer a simple and cheap "appliance" to replace complicated and costly personal computers, Ellison said.

In theory, the application software for NCA goes in a midtier server, such as Oracle's Web Application Server, and the data goes into an Oracle database, such as Oracle8.

For companies moving to or already running three-tier applications, that will mean a lower cost of ownership and less maintenance on the desktop, Ellison said.

Oracle's shift from a database-centric company to an NCA-centric company makes sense to some.

"Some people are saying that Oracle is straying from its core database focus. But those criticisms are unfounded because Oracle has always been in the business of supplying tools for getting data out to users," said Tom Hazeu, an application analyst at RUST Environment & Infrastructure, in Sheboygan, Wis. "[Oracle] now believes the Web is the best way to do that, so they're providing a different set of tools for doing that."

Meanwhile, despite the NCA hoopla, other Oracle executives at the rollout in Radio City Music Hall did their best to proclaim the death of archrivals Informix Software Inc. and Sybase Inc. Instead, they said, the true database options to Oracle8 are now from Microsoft Corp. and IBM.

"We're just not seeing Sybase and Informix in competitive sales situations anymore," said Gerald Held, senior vice president of Oracle's server technologies division.

But not everyone agrees that Sybase and Informix can be written off.

"That's hype. Sybase and Informix have a lot of problems. They're the walking wounded and not as strong as they used to be. But they're not out of the picture, they're still players," said Wayne Eckerson, an analyst at Patricia Seybold Group Inc., in Boston. "Oracle would be fooling itself if it thinks Sybase and Informix will no longer [be competitors]."

Others see Oracle8 as Oracle's first real attempt to compete with IBM's DB2 on the mainframe.

"Oracle has made significant strides with the release of Oracle8 in the areas of reliability and scalability. With Oracle8 on high-end Unix machines, you'll be able to do what has only been possible, until now, with mainframe systems," said Neil Herman, an analyst at Salomon Brothers Inc., in New York.

Oracle8 is now available on Windows NT, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, SP2, Sequent PTX and Digital Alpha AXP. It costs $2,360 for an eight-user license.

In addition to the actual shipment of the Oracle8 database, Oracle Applications are now certified to run with Oracle8 and take advantage of some of the database's new features, such as replication, memory management and system administration capabilities. Oracle Education has already trained more than 1,500 database administrators and developers in the United States and 17 other countries.

Source: PC Week