Oracle9i Real Application Clusters is now LIVE in Securities Depository Center

Date: 09/03/2003

Announcement:
The Securities Depository Center (SDC) announces that the SDC application Securities Central Operations Registry Processing & Information Online (SCORPIO) is using Oracle 9i based on AIX 5L, IBM’s open and robust UNIX operating system for the enterprise.

SDC represents an integral part of a transparent, fair and efficient equities market in Jordan to attract domestic and international investor and enhance their confidence, which will contribute to the wealth of the nation.
 
SDC’s Business objectives:
SDC’s objective is to simplify the process of transferring securities, to insure accurate record keeping and their values and to reduce the risk of trading, it is responsible for the registration, authentication of shareholder information, ownership transfer, clearing and settlement of trades. Thus such a critical environment needs secure and accurate data availability, with close to perfection performance, SDC decided on using Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) to take advantage of the Oracle Load balancing and clustering. RAC allows multiple database instances to share the same database, providing optimal performance, scalability, and availability gains. Availability provides near- continuous access to data with minimal interruption from hardware and software component failures. Scalability allows nodes to be added to the cluster to increase processing capabilities without having to redistribute data or alter the user application.

SDC designed and implemented SCORPIO system, a bilingual system that supports complete solution for the registration, deposit and protection of shareholder assets, provides internal and external access controls, and disaster recovery site.
 
Technology Used:
The Oracle 9i RAC - release 2 (latest patch 9.2.0.2) was implemented on IBM pSeries Cluster RS/6000 (HACMP/ES 4.4, SSA Raid5) running AIX 5L. Now the SDC is running the latest version currently available. The database was built on the shared storage using raw devices which gives higher performance. The database is running in archive log mode which ensures recovery to the latest point.

Oracle 9i has included a Data Guard to provide protection against Natural Disasters. This was obtained by building a secondary site configured to act as a backup server playing the standby role contains a physical standby database managed by Data Guard. In case of failure on the primary site a switchover can be done to the standby site in minimal time.
 
Benefits:
Connection to the database from the clients is done through a load balancing configuration. Load balancing randomizes client connections among all listeners servicing a database to avoid overloading an individual listener. SDC members will greatly benefit from the enhanced processing power reliability and scalability of using Oracle IBM pSeries Platform, that will help to enhance and speed up the system to provide complete and accurate shareholder data for the increasing number of connected issuers
 
Thanks:
SDC would like to thank CEB and UBM for their cooperation in all phases of the project. It was a pleasure working on this project
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