Oracle updates big data portfolio, aims to be 'visual face of Hadoop'

Oracle on Thursday updated parts of its big data portfolio with a visualization tool as well as a replication app that brings Hadoop into the broader enterprise fold.

According to Neil Mendelson, vice president of big data and advanced analytics, Oracle's plan is to take disruptive technologies like Hadoop and integrate them into the broader enterprise fold. Mendelson said that Oracle's big data strategy revolves around a mesh of analytics tools that suck in multiple information sources.

If successful, Oracle wants to be a front end to so-called data lakes, which pool information from multiple sources.

Here's a look at the product additions and updates.

• Oracle Big Data Discovery. Mendelson called it the "visual face of Hadoop." The idea behind it was to make sure analysts and data scientists can find and explore data quickly with visualization tools. Big Data Discovery will categorize data, look for columns and rows, structure and correlations about the information. The idea is to "discover, transform and share what you've learned." Big Data Discovery would be a vehicle to probe data lakes.
• Oracle Big Data for Golden Gate. Golden Gate is a set of products designed to replicate data in real time. Golden Gate is now open to Hadoop for replication via formats such as HDFS, Flume, Hive and Hbase. Golden Gate replicates data from Teradata, NoSQL and other data stores and the general idea is to meld Hadoop into the mix, said Mendelson.
• Oracle Big Data SQL. The new release is aimed at performance improvements.
• Oracle NoSQL database. An update includes REST based APIs in addition to C and Java to improve productivity for programmers. Programmatic manipulation of data has also been added.