Oracle9i Application Server is an integrated product suite, which has been significantly extended with Oracle9i Application Server version 1.0.2.1. Now, among other products, Oracle Workflow version 2.6 is included in the product suite.

Oracle9i Application Server is a feature-rich application server that supports popular industry standards, such as Java Server Pages (JSPs) and Enterprise JavaBeans (version 1.1). Currently, Entity Beans are fully functional on Windows NT and Linux only. Apache Web Server, used to provide Web listening services, is provided as part of Oracle9i Application Server. An Oracle plug-in for Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) is available to directly access an Oracle database (for example, to access PL/SQL components).

Oracle9i Application Server integrates a wealth of Oracle components, such as Oracle Database Cache, which can be optionally configured. Oracle8i JVM (Java Virtual Machine) is available with Oracle8i (DBMS) and Oracle9i Application Server. Hence, Java code can be seamlessly moved across tiers without requiring source code changes.

Oracle8i PLSQL is an engine for executing business logic against data in an Oracle8i database and Oracle Database Cache. PL/SQL procedures can be invoked through Web browsers to retrieve data from tables in the database and generate HTML pages that include the data which are then passed back to the Web browser. This concept is similar to using Java Server Pages. The difference, however, is that Java Server Pages are not stored in the database.

While being bundled with Oracle9i Application Server, Oracle Workflow can also be used as a stand-alone product, embedded with the Oracle8i DBMS. Moreover, Oracle Workflow can also be integrated with Oracle Applications.