Munsys celebrates 10 years on Oracle

Munsys celebrates 10 years of running on Oracle spatial technologies. For a decade now, the Munsys solution for utilities and local government has been using a central database with pre-defined Oracle spatial data models. Oracle has consistently provided a high performance data repository for the integrated family of Munsys applications.

While Munsys uses Autodesk design products for spatial data creation and editing, Oracle spatial technology has been the backbone of the data management, reporting and integration capabilities. The ability to work on spatial data in AutoCAD while the data is available as first class database tables revolutionizes the way utilities and local governments can use and manage their asset information.

Spatial data typically stored in drawings and proprietary formats can now truly become part of the corporate dataset and easily be integrated with other enterprise systems at the database level. A pipe segment for example is a single database record that is available to tabular based applications for reporting and record keeping, such as maintenance history, but that same database record can also be used as a graphic entity in AutoCAD for design, mapping and editing.

“Our focus has always been on building applications and tools that streamline the data editing and maintenance processes rather than technology development. Building applications on Oracle has been extremely rewarding and enabled us to deliver high end functionality to our customers for 10 years now. We are excited by the positive impact the Oracle platform continues to deliver for our customers.” said Chris Tolken, Founder of Munsys.
The Munsys family of applications contains pre-defined spatial data models for the management of water, sewer, drainage, parcels, roads and electricity infrastructure. The software is a packaged off-the-shelf solution that is functional from day one and enables typical deployments to be done in 30 to 90 days. For utilities and local governments, who have tight budget restrictions, a cost effective solution such as Munsys that has a short deployment cycle and a high level of functionality is an essential part of good management of infrastructure assets.
For more information please contact info@munsys.com. To see Munsys in action, sign-up for a scheduled on-line presentation (webinar) at www.munsys.com/events.htm

Source: www.gisuser.com

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Oracle to acquire BEA Systems

NEW YORK - Oracle Corp., the world's third-biggest software maker, agreed to buy BEA Systems Inc. for $8.5 billion in cash after a three-month fight, capitulating to the board's demands for a higher price.
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BEA investors will get $19.38 a share, 24 percent more than Tuesday's close, Oracle said yesterday. BEA, the maker of software that lets programs share information, rejected an unsolicited bid of $17 in October, and asked for $21, which Oracle called "impossibly high."

The purchase, Oracle's largest in three years, marks a victory for billionaire investor Carl Icahn and a reversal from last month, when Oracle said a friendly deal couldn't be done with the current board. Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison is looking to BEA to help him maintain the pace of sales amid slowing growth in technology spending.

"It is a lot more than what they initially offered," Edward Lewis, a partner at Atlantic Equities LLP in London, said. "BEA managing to flush out a higher offer from Oracle is obviously proof that their strategy worked."

Icahn, 71, BEA's largest shareholder with about 13 percent, said yesterday he supports the bid. He had pressed the board to agree to a takeover and sued in Delaware demanding that shareholders get the right to vote on a sale.

Icahn could use a win as some of his investments perform poorly. He owns about 14.5 percent of Florida home builder WCI Communities Inc., which has fallen 89 percent in the past year.

Oracle, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., rose 61 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $21.92 on the Nasdaq Stock Market. BEA, based in San Jose, Calif., surged $2.88, or 18.5 percent, to $18.46. The Standard & Poor's 500 Information Technology index has dropped 11 percent this year on concern that companies are cutting technology budgets.

The new price is expensive, based on BEA's revenue from maintenance contracts over the past 12 months, according to Bear Stearns & Co.'s John Di Fucci, calculating the price at about 9.7 times maintenance revenue, compared with the 5 to 8 times sales Oracle typically pays.

Source: Bloomberg News

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Oracle admins ignoring patches, claim researchers

Oracle issues dozens of security patches every quarter, but that doesn't mean database administrators are implementing them.

In fact, a good two-thirds of all Oracle DBAs appear not to be installing Oracle's security patches at all, no matter how critical the vulnerabilities may be, according to survey results from Sentrigo, a Massachusetts-based vendor of database security products.

The results are "surprising, and to be candid, quite frightening," said Mike Rothman, president of consulting firm Security Incite in Atlanta.

Sentrigo polled 305 Oracle database administrators from 14 Oracle user groups between August 2007 and January 2008. The company basically asked the administrators two questions: whether they had installed the latest Oracle patches, and whether they had ever installed any of Oracle's security updates.

The results, which come even as Oracle is scheduled to release its next batch of quarterly Critical Patch Updates Tuesday, showed that 206 out of the 305 surveyed said they had never applied any Oracle CPUs. Just 31 said they had installed the most recent security update from the company. In total, only one-third said they had ever installed an Oracle CPU.

In an emailed statement, Oracle said the company "encourages organisations [to] apply Critical Patch Updates in a timely fashion to maintain their security posture."

"Critical Patch Updates for the Oracle Database are cumulative for the patch set to which they apply, making it easier for customers to keep their systems current with the latest security patch updates," the company said.

The results support what Sentrigo has been hearing anecdotally for sometime, said Slavik Markovich, chief technology officer at Sentrigo. "Some database administrators don't even monitor for Oracle's CPUs. They don't even know when the CPUs come out," he said. "Sometimes, even if their security department tells them to deploy it, they just ignore it," he said.

There are two major reasons for the trend, Markovich said. The first and most important is that most DBAs fear the consequences of installing a patch on a running database, he said.

"To apply the CPU, you need to change the binaries of the database," he said. "You change the database behaviour in some ways that may affect application performance," he said. So applying security patches to a database typically involves testing them against the applications that feed off the database, he said.

"This is a very long and very hard process to do, especially if you are in enterprises with a large number of databases and applications," he said. Applying these patches means months of labour and sometimes significant downtime, both of which most companies can't afford, he said.

Some application vendors also don't certify Oracle patches to run with their applications, Markovich said.

Another problem is that companies that want to install the most recent Oracle patches need to first ensure that they have already installed the previous patch set, Markovich said.

"The real message here is that people who are in charge of operating systems and even applications have gotten conditioned into paying attention to updating their systems fairly soon after a patch or a fix comes out," Rothman said. In contrast, many database administrators continue to drag their feet when it comes to implementing needed security fixes, he said.

Oracle was not immediately available for comment.

Author: Jaikumar Vijayan @ www.techworld.com

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