It's not the Third Secret of Fatima but the Third Paradigm of Computer Usage - and it's not so much shrouded in mystery as obscured by hype. Database development may never be the same again and, as usual, the Internet is the driving force for change.

Older stand-alone or client-server computer environments (the first and second paradigms) will, we are told, melt away. Application programs, files, video and sound will dissolve into a Web-based soup which the fortunate user can spoon up with a Web browser. Company databases will no longer be able to use proprietary software but will have to adhere to Internet standards for network protocols, application development languages and, of course, the user interface. That's the theory.

Oracle claims that its latest database release Oracle8i, shipped this month, is the world's first Internet database. It includes a database-resident Java Virtual Machine which means that built-in Java code can be executed on the database server. Along with Java, support of HTML and XML and the emphasis on building database-driven web-sites, rather than just databases, explain the "i" in Oracle8i.

Other new features highlighted by Fergus Gloster, support manager with Oracle Ireland, are

8i's better handling of unstructured data (text documents and audio files, for example),

its high availability (doesn't crash) in the case of distributed databases,

its ability to support thousands of users using advanced new clustering architecture and load-balancing techniques.

He also stresses 8i's new security features, now based in the database's kernel; security being of paramount importance for an Internet database.

Perhaps the most interesting development in 8i is the Internet File System (iFS) which mimics Windows Explorer. This allows the user to drag and drop files, web-pages or images - any database object - directly into the database. In this way the database can be restructured on the fly using Oracle's ability to control the whereabouts and nature of LOBs (large objects in a database) using metadata (data about data).

The iFS is a big step away from the traditional, highly-structured, normalised, tightly-controlled databases many of us are used to. It is an ambitious concept and, perhaps not surprisingly, is still at the beta stage as 8i begins shipping.

Will Oracle8i kill off the challenge of Microsoft's SQL Server 7.0 in the battle of the databases? Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison hopes so. He has offered $100 million to anyone who can show that SQL Server is less than 100 times slower than Oracle8i under certain rigid test conditions.

This is "a good marketing ploy", says Phil Cross, Microsoft's marketing manager for business systems, but he says the challenge won't be taken up because the small print precludes a realistic contest. Microsoft, says Cross, is content to leave the top 5 per cent of the market - the very large terabyte databases - to Oracle, but will continue to push for the other 95 per cent of the market.

Oracle is bringing the war to Microsoft in another way too. At the Comdex computer exhibition last November, Ellison trumpeted something called "Raw Iron" - an application of 8i running directly on a hardware platform without an operating system (OS).

A scaled-down version of the Solaris OS lives within Oracle8i's micro-kernel, acting as a built-in, invisible OS. Raw Iron, now renamed more prosaically "the Oracle Appliance", probably won't see the light of day until the summer and much molten scepticism has been poured upon it.

One industry commentator compares the appliance hype with Ellison's original, almost religious, promotion of the Network Computer, now considerably scaled-down. Another sees it as "another attempt by Oracle to freeze OS vendors from the market".

Oracle has, however, signed agreements with HP and Dell. Plans by such heavyweight hardware companies to build and market the appliance add greatly to its credibility.

Fergus Gloster sees the appliance as "a natural evolution" of the industry away from the proprietary OS, but also as "evolving from the way 8i allocates resources (such as CPU resources) and organises priorities between competing jobs". In other words, the database is already doing some OS work, so why not dispense with the OS altogether and save some complexity and money?

Gloster points out that Oracle8i and the Oracle Appliance are "neither mutually exclusive nor mutually inclusive concepts". 8i will run on many platforms, including Linux (announced at the LinuxWorld exhibition on March 2nd) and the NT servers of Ellison's old enemy, Microsoft. The appliance can be seen, says Gloster, as just another target platform for Oracle developers.

If it is successful, the appliance does threaten some of Microsoft's OS licensing revenue. Cross maintains the appliance "might attract a niche market but in most small or medium enterprises, an OS is needed to run a range of software". Cross does not think small-to-medium businesses will simply have servers running as boxes in the background; he feels their servers will continue to support a host of varied applications (many of them Microsoft's, of course).

But will the appliance work? Some sceptics (and Microsoft) argue that the need for an OS, with its tuning and organising capabilities, becomes more acute as a database gets bigger. Other doubters (and Microsoft) see the appliance as dependent on Solaris, and thus not OS-free at all. With HP and Dell on board the Raw Iron locomotive, can Oracle get up enough steam in 1999 to drive us through another paradigm shift?

tmoriarty@irish-times.ie