Transaction Processing Performance Council

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison may have got his heroes mixed up, but there was no mistaking his message at Oracle's OpenWorld on Wednesday as he challenged IBM on business software performance. "IBM, you are more than welcome to enter," he said in his keynote speech. "If you'd like to take us on, make our day."

The line comes from actor Clint Eastwood's portrayal of Dirty Harry in Sudden Impact, but Ellison was joined on stage by actor and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. At least Ellison didn't say, "I'll be back," Schwarzenegger's line in The Terminator.

Microsoft announced Wednesday that the 2008 version of SQL Server, its data-management and business-intelligence platform, has been released to manufacturing.

The company said new capabilities have been added, such as support for policy-based management, auditing, large-scale data warehousing, geospatial data, and advanced reporting and analysis. Microsoft is also touting its support for aggregation, summarization, search engines, dashboards, transactions across distributed data sources, and long-running transactions.

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