OracleWorld, the annual gathering for the enterprise software giant's partners and developers, began with harsh words between industry chieftains and almost climaxed with a bomb scare that drove thousands of conference participants into the streets.
Organisers said the show attracted 20,000 visitors, drawn by the strong lineup of speakers, including Oracle founder and chief executive Larry Ellison, Dell Computer head Michael Dell, Sun Microsystems chief executive Scott McNealy, Intel chief Craig Barrett and Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina.
Oracle unveiled the biggest upgrade to its e-business software portfolio since Oracle 9i was released three years ago. While 9i put all of Oracle's applications on to the Web, the new Oracle 10g product line's big feature is its support of grid computing initiatives. Product pricing and its release date are to be announced this week.
'Grid computing really is the first new approach to enterprise computing in four years. It's taken four years, but finally we have something new to talk about,' said Mr Ellison. 'With 10g, we're no longer talking about a cluster of two or four or even eight database servers attached to an application. We're talking about a grid of 64 or 128 servers attached to that information. [There is] a complete difference in scale. [There is] dramatically more performance and [it is] dramatically more robust.'
A computer grid is a collection of computer systems or networks connected to function as though it were a single machine. By spreading the workload across dozens or even thousands of computer networks, proponents say a grid will be cheaper and more efficient than traditional networks.
Announcing the final death of the mainframe computer 40 years after its inception, Mr Ellison said the grid would offer the flexibility that a single big machine lacks.