Grid is a type of parallel & distributed system that enables the sharing, selection, and aggregation of geographically distributed "autonomous" resources dynamically at runtime depending on their availability, capability, performance, cost, and users' quality-of-service requirements.
Oracle 10G Overview
The main thrust of the new features and enhancements of Oracle 10g are towards grid computing which is an extension of the clustering features (Real Application Clusters) introduced with Oracle 9i.
The main thrust of the new features and enhancements of Oracle 10g are towards grid computing which is an extension of the clustering features (Real Application Clusters) introduced with Oracle 9i.
The 'G' stands for Grid Computing. A common missconception seems to be that grid is just the new name for RAC (having improved RAC). This is not the case. 10g comes with both RAC and grid. One will be able to install 10g with RAC only or with grid only, without either and with both.
Grid Computing
Way back in the 1980s companies like Digital Equipment Corp developed clustering technology which allowed two or more computers to to appear as if they were just one to the end-user, thereby enabling load-balancing and hot standby. Oracle (for release 9i) absorbed this technology into the database software so that databases could benefit from the load-balancing and hot-standby capabilities without having to worry about installing addditional clustering software or manually switching users from one database instance to another should a failure occur and just as importantly, without the application having to be cluster-aware.
That was one stepping stone in the evolutionary process, but recently companies like Sun Microsystems have been extending the concept of clusters to be able to include different types (makes) of computers running different operating systems in a "pool" of computing resources that can be made available as and when required to meet peak demands and then released back into the pool when no longer needed (so that other applications may use the resources). The idea of Oracle10g is that the database will be able to dynamically "requisition" resources from the pool (the grid) to meet levels of peak demand. Again the grid can be heterogeneous (i.e. different types of hardware and/or operating systems).
The motivation for the developmnet of grid computing is to reduce the need to have dedicated resources sized for peak capacity. Research has shown that the average CPU usage is only 15-20% and storage usage is only 50%. Having dedicated resources for each major application also means that there can be a large number of systems to maintain. The solution to this is to create a grid - a pool of low-cost servers + storage that can be allocated to applications to meet peak loads.
Other enhancements for Oracle10g are aimed at reducing costs and improving the quality of service by making the database easier to deploy and manage including backup and recovery and data warehosuing enhancements.
