Stories about: Oblix

Oracle has always made bold claims about the security of its database and applications. Now the company has said it will make security a priority as it begins rolling out its next-generation software products for building service-oriented architectures (SOAs), Oracle Fusion, in the next several years.

Oracle within two weeks plans to offer a developer's preview of Oracle SOA Suite 10g Release 3, which features a single-install procedure for all components.

The tools needed to help ease the task of integrating corporate identity management systems and applications are finally starting to emerge and will represent the next big breakthrough in the technology, according to research firm the Burton Group.

Oracle's November purchase of Thor Technologies and OctetString - along with its previous acquisition of Oblix - puts the company into the top rank of identity management vendors.

Startup source-code security technology developer Fortify Software scored a major triumph on Tuesday as Oracle announced plans to use Fortify's tools to seek out holes in Oracle's database and middleware software.

A fault line runs beneath the groundswell that began a few years ago with XML Web services and continues today as SOA (service-oriented architecture). True, nearly everyone agrees that XML messaging is the right way to implement low-level, platform-agnostic services that can be composed into higher-level services that support enterprises business functions. Yet, here's also a sense that the standards process has run amok. IBM, Microsoft, and others have proposed so many Web services standards that a new collective noun had to be invented: WS-* (pronounced "WS star" or sometimes "WS splat"). The asterisk is a wild card that can stand for Addressing, Eventing, Policy, Routing, Reliability, ReliableMessaging, SecureConversation, Security, Transactions, Trust, and a frighteningly long list of other terms. Surveying this landscape, XML co-creator Tim Bray pronounced the WS-* stack "bloated, opaque, and insanely complex."

Positioning its middleware as a comprehensive SOA platform, Oracle on Monday rolled out an upgrade to its application server that adds a business rules engine, boosts support for Web services, and features an updated ESB (enterprise services bus).

Major systems vendors are increasingly integrating identity management products, once sold as stand-alone tools by relatively small pure-play companies, into their product lines.

Oracle and IBM on Tuesday both re-enforced their identity management software offerings with new features and functions.

Oracle said Monday it has acquired Oblix, a privately held identity management technology developer, for an undisclosed sum. Oracle said it will move quickly to integrate Oblix's security products with its own infrastructure software.

AmberPoint on Monday announced an upgraded version of its Web services management software that can manage of thousands of active service-level agreements.