The late 1990s saw an explosion in the world of information technology brought on by the Internet. Although many of the financial highfliers who sought to capitalize on this sea change have fallen by the wayside, the impact of the Internet on the overall landscape and topology of computing has had a lasting effect.
In brief, the Internet tore down corporate IT walls and replaced them with firewalls. Prior to the Internet, real-time information was shared only within the confines of a particular organizationsharing was accomplished essentially through exporting information. The Internet supplied a way for organizations to use their information resources to directly interact with their customers and suppliers.
This massive expansion of scope brought about a number of significant changes, including:
A new set of standards, including HTTP transport, HTML display, URLs for location, SSL for security, and LDAP for external directories.
A set of new programming languages, including several different types of server scripting languages, such as JSPs and ASPs, as well as the corresponding growth of the Java environment.
An even greater emphasis on sharing and integrating information, which was required as individual users needed to access all types of information. Portals and advanced integration standards and technologies seek to address this area of change.
Oracle's entire product line changed to meet the challenge of the Internet. The Oracle database got a new letter in its name, a new product stack sprang up to complete the "Oracle platform" (Oracle Application Server), and Oracle's existing management product, Enterprise Manager, dramatically expanded its focus.
The next few sections of this chapter look at the impact of these new deployment architectures on the Oracle database, on the Oracle Application Server, and on Enterprise Manager.