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 11.2

• New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 11.1

New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 11.2

This release includes the following new or enhanced features:

• The client and server can use different time zone files.

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

• Application patching is improved with edition-based redefinition.

  See "Edition-Based Redefinition".

• OCI supports 64-bit host data types.

  See "64-Bit Integer Host Data Type".

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

  See "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 "OCILobGetContentType()" and "OCILobSetContentType()".

• There is a new direct path loading attribute.

  See "OCI_ATTR_DIRPATH_NO_INDEX_ERRORS".

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

  See "Client Result Cache".

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

  See "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 the chapter about TimesTen Support for Oracle Call Interface in the Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database C Developer's Guide.

New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 11.1

The following new or enhanced features were introduced in release 11.1 of Oracle Call Interface:

• Run-time load balancing is available automatically and improves performance.

  See "Runtime Connection Load Balancing".

• To improve performance, binds and defines now allow noncontiguous buffers for reading and writing (scatter and gather for binds and defines).

  See "Binding and Defining Multiple Buffers".

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

  See "Implicit Fetching of ROWIDs".

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

  See "OCIArrayDescriptorAlloc()".

• The client result cache feature can improve performance.

  See "Client Result Cache".

• New settings provided for database administrators make OCI more secure.

  See "OCI Security Enhancements".

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

  See "OCI Support for XML".

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

  See "Prefetching of LOB Data, Length, and Chunk Size".

• SecureFiles 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 SecureFiles LOBs.

  See "Options of SecureFiles LOBs".

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

  See "Database Resident Connection Pooling".

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

  See "Continuous Query Notification".

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

  See "Publish-Subscribe Notification in OCI".

• Fault diagnostic subdirectory structures help users manage OCI-generated incidents.

  See "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 "OCI_ATTR_DRIVER_NAME".

• New version compatibility of OCI applications is described.

  See "Version Compatibility of Statically Linked and Dynamically Linked Applications".