More Oracle updates: world record in BI and more scrutiny in Phase Forward deal

Life for a global software giant has its daily ups and downs. This week, Oracle announced that it has broken another world record. This time, it was on the SAP(R) Business Intelligence Data Mart (BI-D) standard application benchmark. This is another one for the stats fans; the system comprised of a two-node Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX600 S5 server, with Intel(R) Xeon(R) x7560 2.26 GHz processors. Oracle(R) Database 11g on Linux delivered a world-record result of more that 1.6 million query navigation steps per hour on the SAP BI-D standard application benchmark. This move puts Oracle firmly ahead of IBM, witht he result surpassing IBM’s DB2 record by more than eight times the performance. It looks like Oracle just won’t be beaten on those performance targets.

It can’t always be record-breaking fun, however, and as well as this news, Oracle has been asked for additional information by the US Department of Justice regarding its deal with Phase Forward. Oracle acquired Phase Forward earlier this year, but the Justice Department is looking into how much the deal will affect the competition in the software market.

When the deal was struck earlier this year, Bob Weiler, CEO of Phase Forward, said: “Deployed in over 10,000 clinical trials, Phase Forward’s software has been used successfully by hundreds of customers to accelerate innovation in drug development and patient care delivery.

“We look forward to combining our complementary wealth of experience with Oracle Health Sciences.”

The deal came as part of Oracle’s long term plan to provide mission-critical applications to all key industries. This move, the company’s spokespeople said, will bolster Oracle’s health software offering.

Breaking into the pharmaceutical market is a smart move for Oracle at the moment, with drug companies facing competition from cheaper generic drugs and so looking to offset their revenue declines with more efficient systems.

Back in March, Oracle claimed that it would buy another pharmaceutical software producer, Relsys International, but neither company have yet revealed the figures involved.