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 10.2

• New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 10.1

New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 10.2

• Instant Client Light (English) further reduces the footprint of Instant Client.

  
  

  See Also: "InstantClient Light (English)"

  
  

• Database startup and shutdown can now be done from OCI.

  
  

  See Also: "Database Startup and Shutdown"

  
  

• You can obtain the client library version at compile-time and runtime.

  
  

  See Also: "OCIClientVersion()"

  
  

• A new user handle session attribute, OCI_ATTR_CURRENT_SCHEMA, which has the same functionality as the SQL command ALTER SESSION SET CURRENT_SCHEMA, is described in "OCI_ATTR_CURRENT_SCHEMA".

• OCIDirPathFlushRow() was deprecated. There are small changes in the Direct Path interfaces that are in the following sections:

  
  

  See Also: "OCI_DIRPATH_COL_ERROR" "Direct Path Loading of SQL String Columns" "OCIDirPathColArrayToStream()" "OCIDirPathLoadStream()"

  
  

• OCI clients can register for Real Application Clusters (RAC) high availability events and decide on actions for each event.

  
  

  See Also: "HA Event Notification" "Event Handle Attributes"

  
  

• Restrictions on selecting remote LOB data defined as character or raw datatypes by means of the data interface are eased.

  
  

  See Also: "Creating and Modifying Persistent LOBs" and the subsequent sections

  
  

• Two new functions read and write LOB data for multiple locators in one server round trip.

  
  

  See Also: "OCILobArrayRead()" "OCILobArrayWrite()" "Using OCILobArrayRead() and OCILobArrayWrite()"

  
  

• For NCHAR literal support in OCI, new values of the parameter mode (OCI_NCHAR_LITERAL_REPLACE_ON and OCI_NCHAR_LITERAL_REPLACE_OFF) in the following functions control N' substitution:

  
  

  See Also: "OCIEnvCreate()" "OCIEnvNlsCreate()"

  
  

• The Notifications Enhancement project improves event notification.

  
  

  See Also: "Publish-Subscribe Notification in OCI" "Subscription Handle Attributes" for new attributes OCI_ATTR_SUBSCR_PORTNO, OCI_ATTR_SUBSCR_QOSFLAGS, OCI_ATTR_SUBSCR_TIMEOUT

  
  

• Buffered messaging is now supported within the Streams Advanced Queueing capability.

  
  

  See Also: "Buffered Messaging" for concepts "Streams Advanced Queuing and Publish-Subscribe Functions" for the function reference pages "OCIAQListen2()" for a new function "Streams Advanced Queuing Descriptor Attributes"

  
  

• Database change notification enables client applications to receive notifications when the result set of a registered query has changed.

  
  

  See Also: "Database Change Notification" "Change Notification Attributes" "Change Notification Descriptor Attributes"

  
  

• Asynchronous commit allows the programmer greater control by using new values for the flags parameter when making calls to OCITransCommit():

  
  

  See Also: "OCITransCommit()"

  
  

• An Oracle wallet is a secure software container used to store authentication and signing credentials.

  
  

  See Also: "Secure External Password Store"

  
  

• Application context enables developers to define, set, and access application attributes.

  
  

  See Also: "Client Application Context"

  
  

• Proxy access for a single client can be set using various connect strings.

  
  

  See Also: "Client Access Through a Proxy"

  
  

• OCIPing() is used to confirm that the server connection and the server are active. It also can be used to flush all the pending OCI client-side calls to the server.

  
  

  See Also: "OCIPing()"

  
  

• Windows NT is no longer supported for OCI.

  
  

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

  
  

• Transparent Application Failover (TAF) is enabled for connection pooling.

  
  

  See Also: "Transparent Application Failover"

  
  

• OCI Scrollable Cursors now works for remote mapped queries. Transparent Application Failover (TAF ) works with OCI Scrollable cursors.

  
  

  See Also: "Scrollable Cursors in OCI"

  
  

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" "Streams 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: "Direct Path Context Handle (OCIDirPathCtx) Attributes" "Direct Path Context Handle (OCIDirPathCtx) Attributes"