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 11.1

• New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 11.2

New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 11.1

• Runtime load balancing is available automatically and improves performance.

  See Also:

  "Runtime Connection Load Balancing"

• To improve performance, binds and defines now allow non-contiguous buffers for reading and writing (scatter/gather for binds/defines).

  See Also:

  "Binding and Defining Multiple Buffers"

• Use the SELECT ... FOR UPDATE statement to implicitly fetch ROWIDs.

  See Also:

  "Implicit Fetching of ROWIDs"

• Performance is improved by the use of arrays of descriptors.

  See Also:

  "OCIArrayDescriptorAlloc()"

• The client result cache feature can improve performance.

  See Also:

  "Client Result Cache"

• New settings used by database administrators that make OCI more secure are described.

  See Also:

  "OCI Security Enhancements"

• Support for XML DB and XDK documents has been enhanced to include binary XML.

  See Also:

  "OCI Support for XML"

• OCI applications can optimize fetching of length, chunk size, and data of small LOBs.

  See Also:

  Prefetching of LOB Data, Length and Chunk Size

• SecureFile LOBs. New capabilities of LOBs include encryption, deduplication, and compression. New OCI functions are included in this release. These new functions and features are only usable on the new SecureFile LOBs.

  See Also:

  "Options of SecureFile LOBs"

• Database resident connection pooling. The pool will span processes instead of just span different threads. More efficient applications can result.

  See Also:

  "Database Resident Connection Pooling"

• Database change notification enhancements for query result set changes are added to the pre-existing capabilities.

  See Also:

  "Continuous Query Notification"

• Streams Advanced Queuing event notification now supports notifications spaced in time.

  See Also:

  "Publish-Subscribe Notification in OCI"

• Fault diagnostic subdirectory structures are presented to help you deal with OCI-generated incidents.

  See Also:

  "Fault Diagnosability in OCI"

• To read or write the client driver layer name to improve OCI fault diagnosability, use the following attribute on the session handle.

  See Also:

  "OCI_ATTR_DRIVER_NAME"

• New version compatibility of OCI applications is described.

New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 11.2

• Client and server using different time zone files is described.

  See Also:

  "Client and Server Operating with Different Versions of Time Zone Files"

• Application patching is improved with edition-based redefinition.

  See Also:

  "Edition-Based Redefinition"

• Support for 64-bit host datatypes is available.

  See Also:

  "64-bit Integer Host Datatype"

• New attributes can specify IP address format as either IPv4 or IPv6.

  See Also:

  "OCI_ATTR_SUBSCR_HOSTADDR", "OCI_ATTR_SUBSCR_IPADDR", and "Publish-Subscribe Register Directly to the Database"

• Content types for SecureFiles are used with hierarchical storage.

  See Also:

  "OCILobGetContentType()" and "OCILobSetContentType()"

• There is a new Direct Path Loading attribute.

  See Also:

  "OCI_ATTR_DIRPATH_NO_INDEX_ERRORS"

• The client result cache feature is enhanced. It now has table annotations and supports caching on query with views. Also, the restriction causing the client cache to be disabled with database resident pooling is now removed.

  See Also:

  "Client Result Cache"

• The process to regenerate the data shared library, and the zip and RPM files has changed for Instant Client.

  See Also:

  "Regeneration of Data Shared Library and Zip and RPM Files"

• You can use OCI to access Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database and Oracle In-Memory Database Cache. See Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database C Developer's Guide, "TimesTen Support for Oracle Call Interface".