After Oracle announced the next MAJOR release Oracle 10G dedicated to "grid computing" and announcing it with mails that promise to tell you about "news from the grid" (sounds like Matrix 3 – subtitle) it's time to find out what they are talking about and what they are really going to ship (okay, IBM has WebSphere already grid-enabled, so let's take a look at that too…)

Grid Computing is often linked or synonym for Clusters and Web Services – is it really?

Some links might help:

Computerworld Announcement of IBM's and Oracle's grid products

• IBM Delivering grid-laced WebSphere: WebSphere Version 5.0.2 is a "traffic cop-like" feature that can intelligently monitor application workloads and automatically re-route network traffic to specific servers depending on its workload at any given time. Okay – sound like a cluster with loadbalancing – "The new technology allows large clusters to function as a single environment that can adapt to computing changes on the fly similar to the way electrical grids work" (well most of the time ;-)
• Oracle is raising grid stakes: addresses major issues surrounding grid computing by enabling enterprises to build reliable grids based on commercial, rather than customised, technology. —- nebulous, but I suggest they mean cheap PCs instead of expensive clusters – but their RAC (Real Application Clusters) already promised cheaper clusters by utilizing a shared-disk, but the Oracle-Own Cluster-Manager

Dan Costa in Clustering 101 tries to explain Grids in contrast to clusters as more far-reaching; individual systems can be added or subtracted without a central control.

Well – that's for sure not what we expect for Oracle 10G – is it? after the high performance Cache Fusion seems to be finally available after some years they probably didn't extend the laws of physics to do a node-synchronization over a dumb internet-line – at least not for a load-balancing "cluster" ... I just try to imagine database lock traveling around for 300-400 ms instead of 10-25 ms on a normal cluster-sync disk as it was before cache-fusion… woah – at least 10 times worse performance… no

Oracle To Update App Server For Grid Computing – the new Oracle 10G Application Server also will unify data integration, EAI and B2B integration functionality in the product – more and even more and tells us that

• Grid computing distributes workloads across multiple PCs and servers+, which poses unique management and monitoring problems that many vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun, are trying to solve through software designed to keep track of distributed applications and information okay, sounds like IBM's traffic-cop above
• The 10G application server's new management features will allow solution providers to automate the installation, configuration and setup of system software on different servers, making it easy to provision software assets, Magee said. mmhh – deployment tools for J2EE components? automated packaging and installation like Microsoft's SMS ?

TheServerSide has some good comments on this also

• Billy from IBM interprets that Oracle seems to be a way of respinning RAC in a 'grid' context to make it buzzword compliant, i.e. multiple databases running on a cluster of 2/4 way Oracle RAC machines + SAN based storage and that's fine as far as it goes.
• IBM defines Grid Computing and adheres very much to the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) which is also supported by Oracle, but not yet implementable (well – at least IBM implemented a "computing on demand" marketing buzz… so all others have to follow)
• PC Magazine in October 2002 was talking about grids in a more Peer-to-Peer (P2P) way, but we sure do not expect IBM or Oracle to deliver the next file-sharing-tool a'la Kazaa , Shareaza or eMule – do we?

Grid Computing Oracle Style by Linuxplanet explains Oracle's definition including

• "data provisioning" – a flexible way that allows transportable databases, even portions of a database or individual tables. Tables can be detached from one database and re-attached to another database by manipulating meta-data instead of real database files that require shutdown/startup of the database.
• real application clusters again – so running on Linux blades with SAN disks instead of lousy PC wired via GSM modem or so…

IBM Tests Grid With Games in conjunction with some students from the University of Wisconsin developed GameGrid, a derivative of IBM's OptimalGrid effort and adapted the open-source version of Quake2 to stress IBM's grid.

Oracle Grid Computing Technologies explains the grid again very data-centric and tells us that already Oracle9i possesses the key technology differentiators — Oracle Real Application Clusters, Oracle Streams, and Oracle Transportable Tablespaces — for building the Grid… hmmm – now what's the 10G for?

Oracle's Grid Cookbock finally reveals that – at least the 9i "Grid" – is nothing more that well-known things like mentioned above.

Grid is promising Cluster functionality for heterogeneous environments – like a couple of old PCs (like Google does) when you ask IBM or folks from the Open Grid Services Architecture

If you ask Oracle, it's in my opinion just a new Oracle 10G Real Application Cluster (RAC) with EAI/Web Services/Monitoring tools integrated…

If you are interested in the rocket-science of Grid Computing – the more researcher's approach besides all specific products, then check out Grid Computing which maintains a huge directory of various very scientific resources.

Hope this all helps a little bit – what's your opinion?