This paper discusses about what cloud computing means for data management from an industrial perspective, illustrate challenges, opportunities, technologies and impact. We will also ask where cloud computing stands on the hype curve, if we are reinventing the wheel with some technologies, and outline important research questions the data management community should address to move cloud computing to the next level.

Availability requirements for database systems are more stringent than ever before with the widespread use of databases as the foundation for ebusiness. This paper highlights Fast-Start™ Fault Recovery, an important availability feature in Oracle, designed to expedite recovery from unplanned outages. Fast-Start allows the administrator to configure a running system to impose predictable bounds on the time required for crash recovery. For instance, fast-start allows fine-grained control over the duration of the roll-forward phase of crash recovery by adaptively varying the rate of checkpointing with minimal impact on online performance. Persistent transaction locking in Oracle allows normal online processing to be resumed while the rollback phase of recovery is still in progress, and fast-start allows quick and transparent rollback of changes made by uncommitted transactions prior to a crash.

In this paper, we describe the Oracle Large User Population Demonstration and highlight the scalability mechanisms in the Oracle8 Universal Data Server which make it possible to support as many as 50,000 concurrent users on a single Oracle8 database without any middle-tier TP-monitor software. Supporting such large user populations requires many mechanisms for high concurrency and throughput. Algorithms in all areas of the server ranging from process and buffer management to SQL compilation and execution must be designed to be highly scalable. Efficient resource sharing mechanisms are required to prevent server-side resource requirements from growing unboundedly with the number of users. Parallel execution across multiple systems is necessary to allow user-population and throughput to scale beyond the restrictions of a single system. In addition to scalability, mechanisms for high availability, ease-of-use, and rich functionality are necessary for supporting complex user applications typical of realistic workloads. All mechanisms must be portable to a wide variety of installations ranging from desk-top systems to large scale enterprise servers and to a wide variety of operating systems.