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Figure 1.3.
The network computer
is a "thin client" that
simply downloads
applets and runs them
using a browser.
What makes this architecture different from a mainframe with dumb terminals? Simply stated, NCs aren't dumb terminals; they are less-complex computers that request applications (applets) and data from a server. What makes them different from dumb terminals is that they can handle complex graphical objects, HTML documents, and Java applets.
What Network Computers Offer
The advantage that network computers offer the world is basically twofold:
- Price: At this time, it is less expensive to fill a classroom with 30 NCs and a server. The NC doesn't need the processing power, memory, and disk space of a stand-alone or networked PC. It is simply a terminal, a mouse, a keyboard, and a less-expensive computer chip and ROM memory system.
- Convenience: Because all applications are located on the server, maintenance is simpler. When you purchase a new piece of software, it is installed once on the server and pulled down by the NCs.
The Challenges Facing NCA
The question now is, will this new technology ever make it? Many logical or easy-to-use technologies have failed in past years . Some operating systems and interfaces on the market were more powerful than the MS-DOS/Windows combination, but due to a variety of factors, these products, such as OS/2, never made it. Oracle and its NC partners must not only use logic and
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price to push this new technology, but they also must promote the idea that the NC is the technology of the future. If they cannot do that, companies will not opt for the cheaper, more efficient solution for fear of entering a dead-end technology. This new struggle for the desktop should be an interesting battle.
Network Computer, Inc.
Network Computer, Inc. (NCI), is a corporation founded by Oracle, and at press time, it was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Oracle Corporation. Its purpose is to promote the network computer by developing software and technology products around the NC.
Today NCI offers a hardware/software solution of network computers that is cheaper than the average cost of today's configuration using standard PCs and Microsoft software. For instance, in a press release from NCI on June 24, 1997, a five- user NC system with software comparable to Microsoft Office cost $1,245.00 for the software and $9,325.00 for the hardware. The cost for the Microsoft PC software and BackOffice Server was $6,588.00 for software and $22,423.00 for hardware.
Oracle has also purchased Netscape's stake in Navio, which is another software vendor for the network computers. Oracle is attempting to gain market share with both hardware and software ventures with the NC.
America's Promise, Oracle's Promise
At Radio City Music Hall, Larry Ellison introduced Oracle's Promise, a foundation to bring network computers to every child's desk in America. It was founded with a $100 million gift from Oracle. The news was well received by Colin Powell, chairman of America's Promise, a nonprofit organization charted to improve the lives of disadvantaged youths.
Oracle obviously perceives the network computer as the ideal computer architecture for the classroom, allowing children to browse a server for information without the complication or cost of maintaining and purchasing a complete PC system. Aside from these advantages, the cost of an NC-based educational system is smaller than the cost of comparable PC-based educational classroom systems that are offered today.
CORBA
Oracle, Sun, IBM, Netscape, and 700 others chose CORBA IIOP as the standard to connect distributed objects across the Internet and intranets . (CORBA stands for Common Object Request Broker Architecture.) IIOP stands for Internet Inter-Orb Protocol. This standard competes directly with the Microsoft DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model). At this point, it appears that many companies are rallying behind CORBA to break the Microsoft dominance in software.
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As shown in Figure 1.4, CORBA is a three-tier architecture. The first tier is the front-end Web client. The second tier is the Web server, containing HTML documents, applets, and object request brokers (ORBs). Finally, a data- intensive third tier consists of the back-end information systems, such as relational databases that either provide information to the Web server based on a request or process information, such as an online order, and insert rows into a database.
Figure 1.4.
The common object
request broker
architecture.
CORBA is important because it creates an open standard for the development of portable Java-based applets and applications. For Oracle's vision of the network computer to succeed, CORBA must become an industry standard. The network computer will draw from CORBA's object
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web, which will consist of applications that can all talk to each other through the CORBA virtual bus. These applications can be written by any vendor who uses the CORBA virtual bus.
With CORBA as a standard, anyone will be able to write a Web-based application that can talk to Oracle by using an industry-wide standard to request and send information to the Oracle server. In the future, Oracle pledges to build its main product line of database engines, stored procedures, tools, and Internet products using the CORBA standard.
Introducing the Cartridge
A cartridge is a simply a reusable software component, similar to a software library of routines that used to be linked at compile time to any program that wanted to use it. Unlike traditional software libraries, a cartridge is not linked; it exists independently and is invoked by an application. A cartridge can be written in Java, JavaScript, C, C++, Visual Basic, or SQL. A cartridge communicates with other applications, users, or databases through an IDL (Interface Definition Language).
When you write or purchase cartridges to perform a specific task, software becomes more object-oriented, and methods are more formally registered. Instead of incorporating a mess of interface code in an application for communication with a mainframe, an application can use a cartridge and communicate with it using a standard method. Instead of hundreds of applications written by different programmers communicating with a mainframe, you have applications that all interface through one registered cartridge.
Because cartridges will follow the CORBA standard, many software vendors will be able to write cartridges that customers can purchase and simply plug in with their existing software environment.
The Oracle Enterprise Manager
How will you manage all of these cartridges? Good question. If cartridges were just software components that had to be pieced together, that would be another software nightmare. Oracle's answer to the question is the Universal Enterprise Manager. You will use this piece of software to install and configure cartridges and to allow the user to monitor the use and performance of the Oracle Server.
The Universal Application Server
How do all these cartridges talk to each other? The Universal Application Server is almost like a database containing cartridges; it is a place where cartridges are registered. The server is responsible for providing connectivity, recovery, load balancing, transaction management, messaging, queue management, and security for each of the cartridges registered. The server will perform two major tasks . First, it will act as a Web request broker, meaning it will act as a standard Web server, sending HTML and Java applet code through a standard HTTP interface. Secondly, it will use CORBA's IIOP interface to send needed objects to any cartridge that asks for one.
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