REDWOOD SHORES, CA -- Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL) today announced expanded support for Linux by the Oracle9i product line, which includes the newly shipped Release 2 of Oracle9i Database, Application Server and the Oracle9i Developer Suite. Today's announcement means Oracle customers will now be better equipped to develop and deploy enterprise applications using low cost Linux hardware while preserving their existing IT skills. "IDC expects Linux to become a key platform for enterprise databases in the coming years. As such, it is a promising environment for Oracle to focus on," said Carl Olofson, Program Director, IDC. "IDC projects that, given the right development and support for Linux, the market revenue for relational DBMS on Linux will surpass the relational DBMS revenues on UNIX by 2006, growing to $5.9 billion." Further analysis can be found in IDC's recently-released Worldwide Relational and Object-Relational Database Management Systems Software Forecast and Analysis, 2002-2006, document number 27289. As the first vendor to provide support for Linux in a commercially available relational database, an application server and a complete set of developer tools, Oracle has been instrumental in driving support for Linux since its inception. Oracle is at the forefront of bringing Linux to the enterprise and has been named the software vendor of choice in numerous independent Linux surveys and the recipient of several Linux awards. Most recently, Oracle9i Database was recognized as the number one database for Linux by Linux Journal, while Evans Data surveyed Linux developers and found Oracle9i Application Server is the most preferred and most deployed application server for development on Linux. Release 2 of Oracle9i Database Expands Linux Support Oracle9i Database Release 2, the latest update to Oracle's award-winning database, sets new standards in reliability, scalability and performance. The release includes new high availability, business intelligence and XML features, as well as numerous manageability improvements. Oracle's unique approach to database clustering in Oracle9i Database has enabled enterprise customers to reduce the cost of deploying and managing the database. "Through our database clustering innovation in the middle-tier, Oracle has provided a key component in the delivery of the next cost-effective platform for the enterprise," said Charles Rozwat, executive vice president, server technologies at Oracle. "We believe Linux is a very attractive option for our customers and will continue to be in the future." Linux Developers Demand Oracle To date, Oracle9i Database has been in high demand in the Linux community. In the last year, nearly 370,000 downloads have been recorded on Oracle Technology Network (OTN), Oracle's developer community Web site. Oracle9i Application Server and Oracle9i Developer Suite have also gained significant traction in the past year, logging more than 200,000 downloads. With the recent availability of Oracle9i Developer Suite with Oracle9i JDeveloper, developers can extend enterprise applications to Linux. By reducing the number of separate tools that developers need to support the full application development life cycle, industry standards and third-party software, Oracle9i Developer Suite and Oracle9i JDeveloper reduce the cost of application development and streamline the development of high quality, high performance J2EE applications and Web services. Because Oracle9i JDeveloper is written in 100 percent Java, it runs natively on low-cost Linux machines for optimized performance and scalability -- no other Java integrated development environment (IDE) can make this claim. "We have found that Oracle9i JDeveloper on Linux is an outstanding environment for J2EE, JSP and Web services development, and our J2EE applications are deployed exclusively on Linux using Oracle9i Application Server," said Rick Ross, president of the 66,000-member Javalobby. "Our membership has grown more than 10 percent in just two months, and our Web site traffic has increased about 50 percent. I'm certain that the performance and scalability of Oracle9i Application Server have been key drivers of this growth because our whole site just feels so much better." "Using Oracle9i Application Server and Oracle9i JDeveloper, both of which are completely written in Java and fully portable, we have been able to make immediate progress in our plan to rip Windows out of our data center and switch to Linux," continues Ross. "It has been a very strategic business and technical decision for us and has enabled our developers to work much more productively. Plus, we anticipate our move to Linux will bring a significant reduction in hardware and administration costs. Linux is definitely ready for the enterprise." Availability Release 2 of Oracle9i Database, Application Server and Oracle9i Developer Suite on Linux can be downloaded today free-of-charge from Oracle Technology Network. A RedHat Package Manager (RPM) format of Oracle9i JDeveloper on Linux will be available for developers using RedHat.