What's New in Large Objects?

This section describes the new features in the following releases:

LOB Features Introduced in Oracle Database 11g Release 1

Oracle SecureFiles adds the following capabilities:

Intelligent LOB compression enables users to explicitly compress data to save disk space. This feature can only be used with the new LOB implementation in this release (storage parameter SECUREFILE).
Intelligent LOB encryption introduces a new encryption facility for LOBs. The encrypted data in now stored in-place and is available for random reads and writes. This feature can only be used with the new LOB implementation in this release (storage parameter SECUREFILE).
Deduplication enables Oracle Database to automatically detect duplicate LOB data and conserve space by only storing one copy (storage parameter SECUREFILE).
LOB data path optimization includes logical cache above storage layer, read prefetching, new caching modes, vectored IO, and so on.
New LOB APIs. Existing OCI functions work on the new SECUREFILE LOBs. New OCI functions and PL/SQL packages are also added. Parameters of the CREATE TABLE, ALTER TABLE, and SQL commands are new or changed for LOBs. High performance space management includes changes to LOB SQL statements and DBMS_SPACE package changes.

See Also:
Chapter 4, "Using Oracle SecureFiles"

OCI LOB prefetching gives you improved performance.

CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE now have a LOW option for compression of SecureFiles.

See Also:
"CREATE TABLE Usage Notes for Compression" and "ALTER TABLE Usage Notes for Compression"
There is JDBC support for LOB prefetching and for zero-copy input/output, both of which improve performance by reducing server round trips.

See Also:
"LOB Prefetching to Improve Performance"
The Oracle Database File System creates a standard file system interface on top of files and directories that are stored in database tables.

See Also:
Chapter 5, "Introducing the Oracle Database File System" through Chapter 10, "Creating a DBFS Store"
Database File System Links and Hierarchical Storage Management allow you to store SecureFiles content on any tape library such as those managed by RMAN.

See Also:
"Using DBFS Links" and Chapter 9, "DBFS Hierarchical Store"