Introduction

"The enduring impact of our choices is not what we get, but what we become."

—Michael Josephson

64-bit and Oracle Break the Space Time Continuum

Many people think the rise of the Internet in the mid-1990s was a rare event never to be repeated again in our lifetime. They are infinitely wrong! In the last version of the book, I noted that Terabyte databases would be everywhere soon; few people believed me. It's happened; Terabyte databases are now quite common. With Oracle 10g, Petabyte databases (1,000 Terabytes) will start to come of age, and Exabyte databases (1,000,000 Terabytes) may even make an entrance by Oracle 11g (almost definitely by Oracle12g of the database).

Few people understand that the rise of the Internet Generation was directly attributable to 32-bit computing and the ripple effect resulting from the theoretical possibilities that 32-bit computing provided. Oracle introduced 32-bit computing in 1983, yet it took until the mid to late 1990s for the hardware to catch up and for companies to take full advantage of it (roughly 12 years). The Information Age is about to take another enormous step forward. This step will be infinitely larger than the one that drove the Internet Generation. We are now embarking on an Oracle 10g database that functionally does everything but defy gravity, while simultaneously heading into the futuristic world of 64-bit computing. 64-bit computing was introduced in 1995 with Oracle7. Adding twelve additional years for adoption puts us at 2007 for 64-bit to start taking off. The next generation, Generation 64, and 64-bit computing will change the world as never before. That rise begins this year. Consider the following research from IDC/EMC and The University of California at Berkeley: