Grid computing is not necessarily a new concept; however, its adoption within the enterprise has given birth to a new concept called enterprise grid computing, which is being embraced by the entire IT industry. Enterprise grid computing aims to consolidate IT resources - including both infrastructure software and applications - and optimize their usage, cutting costs substantially along the way. Since Java and J2EE are widely used as enterprise software platforms, how do they align with this vision?
This article outlines a set of challenges that JDBC faces as the database connectivity layer within enterprise grid environments and illustrates how the Oracle Database 10g JDBC driver addresses these challenges. First, I'll introduce the concept of enterprise grid computing; then I'll examine how Java and J2EE operate in grid environments and identify their database connectivity requirements; and finally, I'll discuss the features of the Oracle Database 10g JDBC driver that address those requirements.
Enterprise Grid Computing
Commercial software vendors use an assortment of terms, such as utility computing, on-demand computing, and autonomic computing, to describe enterprise grid computing. Regardless of which term is used, products that support enterprise grid computing all have the same set of common functional denominators:
- Resource consolidation
- Resource virtualization
- Policy-based resource management
- Provisioning or allocation
The convergence of recent hardware and software advances has made resource virtualization possible and allowed the enterprise grid to be constructed. On the hardware side, these advances include networked storage devices (like storage grids) and low-cost, modular hardware components (such as blades); on the software side, they include improvements in networking, Web services, databases, application servers, and management frameworks.
Although no specific enterprise grid computing standards have been established, there is a general move toward the concept of service-oriented architectures (SOA), which are based on and make extensive use of existing Web services standards and specifications. SOA makes it possible to construct architectures where client applications can simply register, discover, and use the services deployed over the grid. This move is spearheaded by academic and research proposals such as the Open Grid Service Architecture (Global Grid Forum) and middleware vendors through participation in Web services standards bodies. A new consortium, Enterprise Grid Alliance, has been formed with the goals of developing enterprise grid solutions and accelerating the deployment of grid computing in enterprises.
