Oracle has previewed the next release of its E-Business Suite at OpenWorld 2008 in San Franciso, and released a new JDeveloper and Oracle Application Development Framework tool.

The firm showed off version 12.1 of E-Business Suite, saying that it formed part of its Applications Unlimited programme.

Applications Unlimited represents the firm's desire to support new Fusion releases, which combine best-of-breed features from across Oracle's portfolio with existing applications.

Oracle said that this latest release adds nine new products, and a number of functional advances to the suite of e-business applications.

Oracle showed off a number of improvements to the suite, including better functionality in human resources, financials, supply chain, procurement, data management and customer relationship management applications.

"Customers will be equipped to conduct business globally with the ability to respond to global customer demands and competition, streamline operations across geographic regions and source and retain talent on a global scale," the firm said in a statement.

To further enhance development on its platforms, Oracle also released new JDeveloper and Oracle Application Development Framework tools designed to support Web 2.0 development.

Oracle JDeveloper 11g and Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) 11g are components of Oracle Fusion Middleware.

The releases are aimed at helping developers create and deploy Java Platform Enterprise Edition 5, Web 2.0 and Ajax rich internet applications, according to Oracle.

"Developers are faced with a multitude of technologies and learning curves for building Web 2.0, mobile and rich enterprise applications, adding complexity and cost to the development process," said Ted Farrell, chief architect and senior vice president at Oracle.

"Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF address these complexities by abstracting developers from the underlying technologies, providing an immense productivity boost for standards based application development."