With several key makers of computer hardware having decided against displaying their products at the annual Comdex trade show, database programs became an unusual focus of attention as an expected crowd of 220,000 converged on this desert resort city. Far from the Washington courtroom battles over antitrust matters, Microsoft Corp.'s chairman, Bill Gates, implicitly challenged his corporate rivals Sunday night, with a multimedia presentation that showed the expanding capabilities of personal computers based on the various Windows operating systems. On Monday, Microsoft launched a new version of its SQL Server, database software meant for large corporations. But Oracle's chairman, Lawrence Ellison, announced a strategy that would minimize the importance of operating systems for its database programs that run on servers, The New York Times reported. This, he told The Times, would be simpler to manage than current servers.
Databases allow users to search stored information in a variety of ways.
Mr. Ellison also was preparing to introduce databases that only require the central kernel of an operating system, the part that is always present in memory. This is a shift in Mr. Ellison's strategy for network computers, models with few features that were mainly designed to access networks, including the Internet. But his new strategy, starting on his home turf of database software, could open the door for many kinds of appliances to run on networks without needing a full-scale operating system. International Data Corp. Mr. Ellison told The Times that Oracle's databases that use just small bits of an operating system would be more stable than SQL Server 7, which will run on Windows 2000, the new name for the Windows NT high-end operating systems. Offerings from Oracle and IBM can run on various operating systems, including Unix, which is popular with large-scale users.