News Mix 27-9-2012

September 13, 2012

Anticipating greater usage of Ubuntu within the enterprise, Canonical has released a significant update to its Landscape Ubuntu system management tool.The new version of the software, Landscape 12.09, is designed to better manage systemwide software updates. It offers more compliance reporting. This version also exposes its API (application programming interface) so it can be connected with other system management tools, such as Puppet. Also, the for first time, the software allows administrators to install Ubuntu over a network, in a process called bare-metal provisioning.

September 24, 2012

In an effort to expand programmer awareness, Oracle has released a free version of its Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF).

"This [release] allows the ADF framework to be used outside of the Oracle stack," said Bill Pataky, vice president of product management in the Oracle Fusion team. The package, called Oracle ADF Essentials, promises to be "a really powerful way to create rich Web applications very quickly," Pataky said.

September 25, 2012

Hitachi has developed a glass-based data storage medium that is highly heat and water resistant, capable of holding data for hundreds of millions of years, and says it may be able to bring it to market by 2015.

The company's main research lab has developed a way to etch digital patterns into robust quartz glass with a laser at a data density that is better than compact discs, then read it using an optical microscope. The data is etched at four different layers in the glass using different focal points of the laser.

September 25, 2012

Many signs suggest that Oracle is about to introduce a next-generation version of the Exadata database machine, the first and apparently most successful of its "engineered systems" that combine Oracle software with servers, networking, and storage.

September 25, 2012 

Microsoft has extended mainstream support for Windows Server 2008 by 18 months, and again reminded customers that the still-strong Windows XP will retire in April 2014.