Sneak Peek For Oracle App-Server Upgrade

Oracle on Tuesday previewed an upgrade to its application server and said Hewlett-Packard would bundle the software with its servers as part of a deal to spur sales of Oracle products on computers running Intel's Itanium 2 chip.

HP earlier this year began bundling BEA Systems Inc.'s app server with some of its servers after HP shut down its own middleware business. HP plans to bundle Oracle's app server on its HP-UX, Windows, and Linux servers running Itanium 2 chips. App servers perform the server-side number crunching that underpins Web apps and have become a popular target for application developers. Wider use of Oracle's app server could increase demand for its flagship database.

Oracle 9i Application Server Release 2, version 9.0.4, supports software written according to the latest Java specification, called Java 2 Enterprise Edition 1.3, and Web-services protocols.

Oracle CFO Jeff Henley said at the company's Oracle World conference in San Francisco on Monday that the company would "return to positive revenue growth" next year. "Companies are working off a lot of their projects."