What's New in Oracle Call Interface?

The following sections describe the new features in this Oracle Call Interface manual:

• New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 10.1
• Oracle9i Release 2 (9.2) New Features in Oracle Call Interface
• Oracle9i Release 1 (9.0.1) New Features in Oracle Call Interface
• Oracle9i Release 9.0.0 New Features in Oracle Call Interface

New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 10.1

• Native float and double are supported.

  See Also: "BINARY_FLOAT and BINARY_DOUBLE" "Native Float and Native Double"

• OCIDescribeAny() supports rules, rule sets, and evaluation contexts.

  See Also: "Rule Attributes", and so on

• The OCI Instant Client capability simplifies OCI installation and saves disk space for application deployment.

  See Also: "OCI Instant Client"

• Additional information on upgrading to a new release of OCI is available.

  See Also: "Compatibility and Upgrading"

A new discussion describes when to use session pooling or connection pooling.

• Batch array enqueue and dequeue functions and attributes have been added.

  See Also: "OCI and Streams Advanced Queuing" "Streams Advanced Queuing and Publish-Subscribe Functions" "Advanced Queuing Descriptor Attributes"

• LOBs can be of greater size than 4 GB. There are several new LOB functions whose names end in "2" that handle LOBs greater and smaller than 4 GB, and replace deprecated LOB functions without "2".

  See Also: "Using LOBs of Size Greater than 4 GB" "LOB Functions"

• Database Globalization Support is now described in this manual.

  See Also: "OCI Globalization Support" "OCI Globalization Support Functions"

• Statement Caching has been enhanced.

  See Also: "Statement Caching in OCI"

• Windows documentation is now included in this guide.

  See Also: Appendix D, "Getting Started with OCI for Windows"

• There is OCI support for the unified C API which is used for XMLType columns in tables (and XML documents).

  See Also: "OCI Support for XML" Chapter 22, "OCI XML DB Functions"

• There are new or modified functions.

  See Also: "OCICollGetElemArray()" "OCINumberToRealArray()"

• New modes OCI_BIND_SOFT and OCI_DEFINE_SOFT are documented.

  See Also: "OCIBindByName()" "OCIBindByPos()" "OCIDefineByPos()"

• New attributes for end-to-end application tracing are described.

  See Also: "End-to-End Application Tracing" "User Session Handle Attributes"

• New attributes for Direct Path are described.

  See Also: "OCI_ATTR_DIRPATH_INDEX_MAINT_METHOD" "OCI_ATTR_DIRPATH_SKIPINDEX_METHOD"

Oracle9i Release 2 (9.2) New Features in Oracle Call Interface

• Session Pooling

  See Also: "Session Pooling in OCI" "Connect, Authorize, and Initialize Functions" "Session Pool Handle Attributes"

• Statement Caching

  See Also: "Statement Caching in OCI" "Connect, Authorize, and Initialize Functions"

• Any Data Enhancements

  See Also: "OCIAnyDataTypeCodeToSqlt()" "NCHAR Typecodes for OCIAnyData Functions"

• NCHAR and Codepoint Support for Objects

  Objects can have NCHAR, NCLOB, and NVARCHAR2 attributes.

  See Also: "OCI Globalization Support"Table 14-1, "Object Datatype Mappings for Object Type Attributes" "OCI Object Overview" Table 10-4, "Attribute Values for New Objects" Table 14-1, "Object Datatype Mappings for Object Type Attributes" "OCIEnvNlsCreate()" "OCINlsEnvironmentVariableGet()"

• Client Character Set Control

  See Also: "Client Character Set Control from OCI"

• Database Globalization Support

  See Also: "Other OCI Globalization Support Functions"

• Direct Loading using date_cache

  See Also: "Using a Date Cache in Direct Path Loading of Dates in OCI" "Direct Path Context Handle (OCIDirPathCtx) Attributes"

• New OTT Option: URL

  See Also: "URL"

• Structural changes to this document:

  "Statement Functions" has been moved from chapter 15 to allow printed copies of this guide to remain in two volumes.

Oracle9i Release 1 (9.0.1) New Features in Oracle Call Interface

• Defining LOB Output Variables

  This section has been re-written.

  See Also: "Defining LOB Output Variables"

• Supporting UTF-16 Unicode

  This discussion has been re-written.

  See Also: "OCI Globalization Support" "Character Conversion in OCI Binding and Defining" "Bind Handle Attributes" "Define Handle Attributes"

• Advanced Queuing

  Changes were made in the interfaces of publish-subscribe notification and in the OCI function OCISubscriptionRegister(). Several subscription handle attributes were modified and several were added. Open registration for publish-subscribe has been added.

  See Also: "Publish-Subscribe Notification in OCI" "Publish-Subscribe Registration Functions in OCI" "OCISubscriptionRegister()" "Subscription Handle Attributes" "OCIServerDNs Descriptor Attributes" "Environment Handle Attributes" "Publish-Subscribe LDAP Registration Example"

• Direct Path Loading

  Direct path loading of data into object columns as well as scalar columns, is now supported. Direct path loading is moved to chapter 12, so that it now appears after the discussion of objects and their use. Sections on binding and defining object datatypes are now at the end of chapter 11.

  See Also: Chapter 12, "Direct Path Loading" "Direct Path Loading Handle Attributes"

Oracle9i Release 9.0.0 New Features in Oracle Call Interface

This document has these new features. Each of these features is discussed in greater detail in the cross-referenced sections:

• Connection Pooling

  This feature enables you to multiplex many logical connections over a single physical connection.

  See Also: "Connection Pooling in OCI" "Connect, Authorize, and Initialize Functions" "Connection Pool Handle Attributes"

• Scrollable cursors.

  Members of a result set can be accessed in non-sequential order.

  See Also: "Scrollable Cursors in OCI" "Statement Functions"

• Globalization support.

  Various OCI calls support UTF-16 for SQL statements, data, metadata, objects, and error messages.

  See Also: "OCI Globalization Support"

• Middle-tier applications.

  New attributes have been added for client authentication.

  See Also: "Middle-Tier Applications in OCI"

• New datatypes.

  Datetime and Interval and Daylight Savings datatypes are described in the following sections:

  See Also: "Datetime and Interval Datatype Descriptors" "Datetime and Interval (OCIDateTime, OCIInterval)" "Data Conversions for Datetime and Interval Datatypes" and "OCI Date, Datetime, and Interval Functions"

• Any Type, AnyData, AnyDataSet.

  An OCIAnyData encapsulates type information as well as a data instance of that type (that is, self descriptive data). An OCIAnyDataSet encapsulates type information as well as a set of instances of that type.

  See Also: "AnyType, AnyData and AnyDataSet Interfaces" and the corresponding new functions in Chapter 20, "OCI Any Type and Data Functions"

• Using LOB columns instead of LONG columns.

  See Also: "Runtime Data Allocation and Piecewise Operations in OCI" has been rewritten with new features for support of LOBs.

• Subtypes of objects can be defined.

  See Also: "Type Inheritance" "OTT Support for Type Inheritance"

• Type evolution.

  How the attributes of types can be changed.

  See Also: "Type Evolution"

• Multilevel collection types.

  Collections whose elements are collections.

  See Also: "Multilevel Collection Types"

• Externally initialized context.

  An externally initialized context is an application context whose attributes can be initialized from OCI.

  See Also: "Externally Initialized Context in OCI" "User Session Handle Attributes"

• Structural changes to this document:
  • Chapter 15 of release 8.1.6 has been split into chapters 15 and 16.
  • The sections in chapters 15 and 16 have been rearranged in a more logical order.
  • Chapters 17, 18, 19 were chapters 16, 17, 18 in release 8.1.6.
  • Chapter 20 has been added.

    See Also: See the section "Compatibility and Upgrading" for information about new calls that supersede existing routines. See the table of contents and the index for entries for the new features.