SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Continuing to provide customers with high system availability and security, Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq: ORCL) today announced Oracle9i Application Server Release 2 (Oracle9iAS Release 2). The latest release of the market's fastest growing application server includes advanced clustering, caching and availability features that combined provide high levels of reliability and enable customers to achieve no single point of failure in their multi-tier deployment. These capabilities are part of the more than 250 new features in the second release. Oracle9i Application Server Release 2 provides the most open and integration-ready architecture available. In addition to its advanced clustering and caching, the latest release includes support for the latest J2EE standard -- Java 2 Enterprise Edition 1.3 -- enterprise-level Web services and integration, unified messaging, and new portal and wireless features. This announcement underscores Oracle's commitment to continually innovate, enabling businesses to reduce system implementation times and cut integration and management costs. ``Oracle9i Application Server delivers the performance, reliability and security we need to provide high quality service to our customers. Its strong adherence to industry standards and its integration-ready architecture enables us to spend less time and IT resources integrating best-of-breed applications, making it possible for us to focus on our core business applications,'' said Mark Dixon, IT Director - Service Provision, Barclays Bank, PLC. Fast Growing The previous release of Oracle9i Application Server, unveiled in June, introduced breakthrough J2EE performance and innovative technologies such as Edge Side Includes (ESI) Web page caching that made it a favorite with Java developers. As a result, Oracle saw a 96 percent year-over-year revenue growth in its application server business. In Q1FY02 alone, Oracle attracted more than 2,500 customers, bringing the total to more than 8,300. In the same quarter, over 85 partners added support for Oracle9iAS. ``Unbreakable'' Reliability and Security Oracle9i Application Server Release 2 introduces advanced clustering and caching features that make it possible to attain high levels of reliability and no single point of failure using low-cost commodity hardware. New features such as cluster caches, dynamic reconfiguration, hardware independent J2EE cluster islands, rolling upgrades, hot deployment, and the Fast Start Fault Recovery Architecture that supports transparent application failover across the application server and database tiers, enable applications deployed on Oracle9iAS to achieve no planned or unplanned downtime. In addition, new technology breakthroughs make it easier to install, configure, develop, and manage applications for cluster configurations. Oracle9i Application Server Release 2 features a comprehensive security infrastructure including a 100 percent complete implementation of the Java 2 Security Standard, including JAAS (Java Authentication and Authorization Service). Oracle9i Application Server Release 2 also supports single sign-on and centralized user provisioning across all Oracle9iAS components, as well as third-party and custom applications deployed on Oracle9iAS. ``Digital River uses Oracle9i Application Server to power e-commerce sites for over 10,000 clients,'' said Marty Boos, chief architect and vice president of information services, Digital River. ``Oracle9iAS delivers the reliability, scalability and high performance we need to guarantee round-the-clock availability for our clients' e-commerce sites.'' Digital River provides outsourced e-commerce products and service for companies such as Symantec, Nabisco and Major League Baseball. Open and Integration-Ready Integration is complex enough without having separate platforms for application-to-application, business-to-business, and Web services integration. Yet companies are increasingly spending more time integrating existing systems rather than developing custom applications as a way to gain competitive advantage. Oracle9iAS is the only complete and integrated platform that provides 360 degrees of integration -- linking applications, data, services, users and partners. Based on open, industry-standards, Oracle9i Application Server Release 2 delivers new support for third-party databases and packaged applications, and extensive capabilities to define and coordinate business processes that span packaged applications, Web services, new Java applications, legacy mainframes, heterogeneous databases, and back-end systems. Web Services Oracle9i Application Server Release 2 is ahead of the industry in delivering support for building, deploying, and managing Web services. By unifying the J2EE programming model with emerging Web services standards such as SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI, Oracle9iAS Release 2 makes it easy for companies to use Java to build and deploy secure, reliable Web services. Web services built on Oracle9iAS can be deployed on all of the operating systems Oracle supports, including all major versions of UNIX and Linux, and are compatible with other standards-based service implementations, including those built with Microsoft's .Net technology. Oracle9i Application Server Release 2 also supports more complex Web services, delivered through standards such as RosettaNet and ebXML, to provide asynchronous delivery, sophisticated security features, and support for multi-party, long-running transactions required for mission-critical business Web services. In addition, the new Trading Partner Management (TPM) facility in Oracle9iAS Release 2 helps companies to define complex business process interactions between partners that can span multiple integration technologies. Using the new Web-based, self-service administration tool, defining these business interactions becomes a self-service task with no coding required. Availability A free Developer Edition of Oracle9i Application Server Release 2 is available for immediate download from Oracle Technology Network. Oracle9iAS Release 2 Standard Edition and Oracle9iAS Enterprise Edition are scheduled to be available in the first quarter of 2002 and are priced at $10,000 per processor and $20,000 per processor, respectively. Oracle9iAS Personalization and Oracle9iAS Wireless are available as options to Oracle9i Application Server Enterprise Edition and are each priced at $10,000 per processor.