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This chapter contains descriptions of all of the features that are new to Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.2). This chapter contains the following sections:
The following sections describe the new features for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.2).
The following sections provide information on new features for 11.2.0.2.
Parameter DB_UNRECOVERABLE_SCN_TRACKING = [ TRUE | FALSE ]
can be used to turn off control file writes to update fields that track the highest unrecoverable SCN and Time during a NOLOGGING
direct path operation.
Performance of the NOLOGGING
load operation could be limited by the control file write I/O.
A new PL/SQL package, DBMS_AUTO_SQLTUNE
, has been introduced to provide more restrictive access to the Automatic SQL Tuning feature.
With this package, access to Automatic SQL Tuning can be restricted to DBAs so that only they can change its configuration settings that effect run-time behavior of the query optimizer, such as enabling or disabling automatic SQL profile creation.
Encryption and authentication have been added to the Oracle Scheduler's e-mail notification feature.
E-mail notification on job failures was added in 11.2.0.1, but it did not support those e-mail servers that require either encryption or authentication. This feature adds this support in 11.2.0.2.
While truncating a table or partition, you can now specify whether or not to keep any segments. Truncating a table or partition with the new extended syntax removes all segments and does not use any space until new data is inserted.
All allocated space in a database can now be reclaimed by truncating tables or partitions with the new extended syntax, optimizing the space foot print of any application.
Both in-place and out-of-place upgrades are supported for client installations.
You now have the option of doing in-place client upgrades reducing the need for extra storage and simplifying the installation process.
Customers can manage the space allocation of any application through extended functionality of the DBMS_SPACE
package. This package can be used to remove the segments for all empty tables in a database, a user schema, or for specific tables. This package also provides the opposite functionality to materialize all segments for empty tables or partitions with deferred segment creation
The explicit management of deferred segment creation enables you to take advantage of this functionality at any given point in time, even after table or partition creation. This is especially useful for systems that were upgraded in-place and makes a re-creation of all empty objects unnecessary.
Resource Manager provides a new directive called MAX_UTILIZATION_LIMIT
that allows you to place a hard limit on the amount of CPU utilized by a consumer group.
The MAX_UTILIZATION_LIMIT
directive is useful for limiting the CPU utilization of low priority workloads. This directive is also useful for providing more consistent performance for the workload in a consumer group, and it helps to build systems where end users experience consistent response times for each database operation.
This feature provides an efficient method for matching proper names (and words) that take a query as input and returns a ranked list of matches. The new operator NDATA
is introduced for this functionality.
In today's multicultural society, a person accustomed to the spelling rules of one demographic may have difficulty applying those same rules to a name originating from a different culture.
Name matching provides a solution to match proper names that might differ in spelling due to orthographic variation.
Entity extraction is the recognition of entity names (people and organizations), places, temporal expressions, and types of numerical expressions such as currencies and measures.
The goal of entity extraction is to identify instances of a particular pre-specified class of entities in textual documents.
The benefit is to produce a "structured" view of a document that can later be used for text or data mining and more comprehensive intelligence analysis.
The default size of the first extent of any new segment for a partitioned table is now 8 MB instead of 64 K.
The goal is to improve I/O performance. However, under certain circumstances, loading a table will take significantly more disk space.
Parallel Statement Queuing ensures all statements run on a system get the appropriate parallel resources to perform well by allowing you to ensure that a system is neither overwhelmed nor starved for parallel server processes. Queuing can be implemented per resource group and allows for both prioritization of statements and the above mentioned management of a parallel workload. Parallel Statement Queuing works in conjunction with Automatic Degree of Parallelism.
Data Warehouses are evolving into systems that support both operational environments and the more classic strategic data warehouse workloads. These mixed workloads require active workload management. One of these resources that should be managed as part of the workload management process is the use of Parallel Server Processes. Parallel server resources are allocated by Automatic Degree of Parallelism (DOP). Statement queuing is then used to ensure that each statement can run with the optimal DOP within the system limits. Allowing each statement to run with the optimal DOP allows a system to:
Perform well overall and avoid large wait times on system resources.
Utilize all resources in an optimal manner without trashing the system in peak times or due to runaway queries.
Balance overall performance to be much more predictable.
Allocate appropriate resources based on policies, not based on user abuse.
This release adds support for importing external data mining models (linear and binary logistic regression) using the Data Mining Group Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) standard. The imported models become native Oracle Data Mining (ODM) models capable of Exadata offload.
If you use an external data mining product to generate models, you could encounter difficulty when deploying those models into their production databases. The current process of deploying such models is expensive, error prone, and non-performant. This feature streamlines the movement of external models into production Oracle systems and leverages optimized performance of the ODM option.
The client interface CTX_QUERY.RESULT_SET
executes a query and generates a result set. The components of the result set are:
Documents.
Support order by SDATA
.
A total estimated count of number of matching documents.
A count, broken down by metadata value, of matching documents in each category.
A page of search results consist of many disparate elements (for example, metadata of the first few documents, snippet, total hit counts, and so on). Instead of accessing the database to construct bits of the search results, it would be useful to have a clean result set mechanism. The result set interface is able to produce the various kinds of data needed for a page of search results all at once, improving performance by sharing overhead. The result set interface can also return data views which are difficult to express in SQL, such as top n
by category queries.
The initial segment creation for partitioned tables and indexes can be deferred until data is first inserted into an object. Individual partitions will not be physically created before data is inserted for the first time.
Several prepackaged applications are delivered with large schemas containing many partitioned tables and indexes. With deferred segment creation for partitioned tables, empty database objects do not consume any space, reducing the installation footprint and speeding up the installation.
This feature extends the XQuery 1.0 standard's operator fn:doc
and fn:collection
to allow direct access to collections of XML documents stored in the database.
Direct access to XML content in tables and views is provided by extending fn:doc
and fn:collection
to support DBUri-style paths through the pseudo protocol xdb://
.
Simplification of Oracle XML and XQuery interfaces provides standard mechanisms, allows building of portable XML applications that are easier to maintain, and deprecates redundant or unused functionality.
Starting with this release, you can configure the UTL_SMTP
PL/SQL package for use on both Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) servers."
This allows the package to be used to send to SMTP servers that require authentication to combat spam.
UTL_SMTP
is extended in this release to provide Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) support.
This allows the package to be used to send to SMTP servers using SSL and TLS to ensure channel integrity.
If you are using Oracle Active Data Guard physical standby database, you already have full dataset or clone or both of the production environment that can be leveraged for testing with SQL Performance Analyzer (SPA). Using remote test execution SPA trial method, you can connect to a physical standby database in read-only mode and use it for testing. The physical standby database continues to be in read-only and standby mode (changes are being applied) during SPA testing. The SPA analysis and reports are available from the remote database that is orchestrating the SPA trials. The orchestrating database (SPA system) can be the primary database or any remote database running Oracle Database 11g and higher releases.
This feature allows customers to leverage existing Active Data Guard physical standby databases for SQL Performance Analyzer Testing.
The EDITION
attribute of a database service specifies the initial session edition for a session that is started using that service. If the program that creates a new session does not specify the initial session, then the edition name specified by the service is used. If the service does not specify the edition name, then the initial session edition is the database default edition.
When an edition-based redefinition exercise is implemented to support hot rollover, some clients to the database will want to use the pre-upgrade edition and others will want to use the post-upgrade edition. In this scenario, the database default edition is insufficient because, by definition, it denotes a single edition. The EDITION
attribute of a database service provides a way to allow the client to specify the edition it wants using environment data rather than by changing the client code.
In this release, the default storage model has changed for XMLType from STORE AS CLOB
to STORE AS SECURE FILE BINARY XML
. This affects the storage used when an explicit STORE AS
clause is not supplied when creating an XMLType table or column. Not specifying a STORE AS CLAUSE
indicates that it is left to the database to determine what the optimal storage model should be.
Prior to database release 11.2.0.2, the default storage model was STORE AS BASICFILE CLOB
. In 11.2.0.2, the default is changed to STORE AS SECUREFILE BINARY XML
.
This change requires the installation of the XDB feature in order to work correctly. Customers that choose not to install the XDB feature must explicitly add STORE AS CLOB
to any DLL statements that create XMLType table or columns to avoid DDL errors. Note that the use of XMLType without having the XDB installed is not a supported configuration as of 11.1.0.1.
No data migration takes place when databases are upgraded to 11.2.0.2.
Binary XML with SecureFiles provides efficient storage, retrieval, and DML capabilities for semi-structured and unstructured XML data. Changing the default storage for XMLType to binary XML with SecureFiles helps customers to adopt best practices.
This feature implements the JDBC 4.0 specification of the SQLXML
interface for managing the XML data type in the database.
This feature allows Java applications using JDBC-Thin or JDBC-OCI to manage the XML data type in the database, using the standard SQLXML
type (java.sql.SQLXML
).
ID key LCRs enable an XStream client application to process changes to rows that include unsupported data types. ID key LCRs do not contain all of the columns for a row change. Instead, they contain the rowid of the changed row, a group of key columns to identify the row in the table, and the data for the scalar columns of the table that are supported by XStream Out. ID key LCRs do not contain columns for unsupported data types.
This feature enables XStream users to capture database changes that cannot be supported using Oracle Streams.
The following sections provide information on ACFS improvements for 11.2.0.2.
Oracle ACFS, Oracle ASM Dynamic Volume Manager (Oracle ADVM) and Snapshots were delivered in Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.1) on Windows NT and Linux platforms.
Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.2) now provides a general purpose cluster file system which leverages the capabilities of Oracle ASM on Solaris and AIX platforms.
The Oracle Automatic Storage Management Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS) Replication feature supports asynchronous replication of an ACFS file system from a primary to standby site.
The Oracle ACFS Replication feature allows you to replicate ACFS file systems across the network to another (possibly distant) site. This provides a disaster recovery capability for the file system. This feature can be used in conjunction with Oracle Data Guard to replicate all Oracle data.
Oracle ASM Cluster File System (Oracle ACFS) security feature provides realm-based security for Oracle ACFS.
Oracle ACFS encryption feature enables data stored on disk (data-at-rest) to be encrypted.
Oracle ACFS security feature provides the abilityqd to create realms to specify security policies for users or groups for accessing file system objects. The Oracle ACFS security feature provides a finer-grained access control on top of the access control provided by the operating system.
Oracle ACFS encryption feature provides the ability to keep data in an Oracle ACFS file system in encrypted format to prevent unauthorized use of data in the case of data loss or theft.
The Oracle ACFS Tagging feature provides a method for relating a group of files based on a common naming attribute assigned to these files called a tag name.
You can use this feature alone or in conjunction with other features. For example, in conjunction with Oracle ACFS Replication, you can select specific files that you would like to replicate to a different remote cluster site by assigning a unique tag name to them. You would then instruct Oracle ACFS Replication to replicate files based upon this tag name. By using tagging in this respect, the need to replicate entire Oracle ACFS file systems is reduced.
A new Quality of Service (QoS) Management Server enables run time management of service levels for hosted database applications on a shared infrastructure by cluster administrators. The goal is to present an easy-to-use, policy-driven management system that ensures meeting service levels if sufficient resources are available and when they are not, allocates resources to the most business critical workloads not meeting their service levels at the expense of the less critical ones.
The following sections describe Quality of Service Management Server features.
The Database Quality of Service (QoS) Management Server allows system administrators to manage application service levels hosted in Oracle Database clusters by correlating accurate run-time performance and resource metrics and analyzing with an expert system to produce recommended resource adjustments to meet policy-based performance objectives.
The Database QoS Management Server enables the pooling of resources to help ensure that, when sufficient resources are available, performance and availability objectives are met, even under demand surges. Managing resource allocations to match performance objectives using a set of predefined policies, the Database QoS Management Server greatly reduces system administrator and DBA time and expertise. By continuously monitoring the system performance based on real demand, it quickly identifies bottlenecks and potential problems that can be corrected before an actual outage occurs. This system cuts time to resolve service level violations as it provides detailed metrics and bottleneck identification along with recommendations for resolution. The end result is the stakeholders trust to share resources thus reducing capital and operational expenses.
To support the Database Quality of Service (QoS) Management Server, the Oracle Database Resource Manager and metrics have been enhanced to support fine-grained performance metrics and now have the ability to manage workloads by user-defined performance classes.
By supporting the Database QoS Management Server, applications sharing a single database or multiple databases within a cluster can be managed discretely to monitor and maintain their service levels. This consolidation reduces hardware, software and management costs while maintaining business objectives.
The administration of the Database Quality of Service (QoS) Management Server is integrated into the new Cluster Administration section of Enterprise Manager. This is designed as a task-based interface to create policy sets using a wizard, manage application service levels using a dashboard, and monitor performance through historical graphs, logs and alerts.
This feature provides full task-based integration into Enterprise Manager, simplifying the administration tasks necessary to manage database application service levels using the Database QoS Management Server. It both reduces task and troubleshooting time as well as the level of training required thus reducing costs while maintaining application availability.
When QoS Management is enabled and managing an Oracle Clusterware server pool, it receives a metrics stream from the Cluster Health Monitor that provides real-time memory data including the amount available, in use, and swapped to disk for each server. Should a node be determined to be under memory stress, the CRS-managed database services are stopped on that node preventing new connections from being created thereby protecting existing sessions. Once the memory stress is relieved (for example, by either existing sessions closing or user intervention), the services are restarted automatically and the listener begins sending opening connections on that server.
Enterprise database servers can run out of available memory due to too many sessions or runaway workloads. This can result in failed transactions or, in extreme cases, a reboot of the server and loss of a valuable resource. Oracle Database QoS Management detects memory pressure in real-time and prevents the addition of new sessions from exhausting available memory thus protecting existing workloads and the availability of the server. This adds a new resource protection capability in managing Service Levels for Oracle RAC database-hosted applications.
The following sections provide information on new Database Replay features for 11.2.0.2.
This feature allows you to perform SQL Tuning Set (STS) capture and workload capture or replay at the same time in a single process. STS is automatically exported when the AWR data for the capture or replay is exported into the specified directory object. By integrating SPA and Database Replay, you can analyze SQL-centric issues in the workload more easily than if they were to do this manually in separate steps. An SPA report can be generated at the end of workload replay to facilitate SQL-centric analysis. Oracle RAC is not yet supported.
Integration of SPA and Database Replay features provides the ability to perform SQL Tuning Set and workload capture or replay in one process and at the same time. As a result, an SPA report is available to help with SQL-centric analysis when workload replay is done.
During workload replay, it is sometimes possible that due to an execution plan, system change or otherwise, a replay call may hang or take a long time. You can specify a replay timeout parameter. If the call exceeds the timeout, that particular call is aborted. This is useful with workloads when one or a few calls result in the workload replay to run too long or hang. Aborting these will still provide a useful workload replay.
Database Replay timeout functionality provides the ability to control how long a long running or runaway replay call will take. Without this functionality, a replay call may take a long time or hang depending on the situation.
Database Replay Workload Analyzer is a tool that analyzes a captured workload and provides an assessment of how reliably it can be replayed. It highlights any potential problems that might be encountered during replay by outlining the parts that cannot be replayed accurately due to insufficient data, errors during capture, and usage of features that are unsupported by Database Replay.
This feature tells you, at the time of capture, whether the specific workload captured is something that can be relied upon for future testing.
The following sections provide information on new management features for 11.2.0.2.
Support has been added in this release to Oracle Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) to create an Oracle Real Application Clusters One Node (Oracle RAC One Node) database as part of the database creation process.
Oracle RAC One Node is a new option to the Oracle Enterprise Edition introduced with the Oracle Database 11.2.0.1. Oracle DBCA now recognizes Oracle RAC One Node databases and provides the required configuration options to ease the management of Oracle RAC One Node.
This feature allows the installer to download mandatory patches for itself as well as for the base product at installation time so that they do not need to be applied later. It also helps resolve installation issues at the middle of a release without either recutting the media or deferring the bug fix to a later release.
Currently, when there is a bug in the base installation, you have to wait until the next release before it can be fixed. This feature helps resolve installation issues at the middle of a release without either recutting the media or deferring the bug fix to a later release. The feature also applies mandatory patches for the base product, thereby creating more certified installations out-of-box.
Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster 11g Release 2 supports out-of-place upgrades. The Oracle ASM Configuration Assistant (ASMCA) now fully supports out-of-place upgrades to this new release.
The graphical user interface (GUI) provides a simple interactive method for upgrading environments to this new release. To allow scripting, the assistant also provides an on-interactive method (silent) mode, which addresses various deployment scenarios used by customers.
Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster 11g Release 2 supports out-of-place upgrades. The Database Upgrade Assistant (DBUA) now fully supports out-of-place upgrades to this new release.
The graphical user interface (GUI) provides a simple interactive method for upgrading environments to this new release. To allow scripting, the assistant also provides an on-interactive method (silent) mode, which addresses various deployment scenarios used by customers.
Oracle Enterprise Manager DB Control provides support for Oracle RAC One Node databases.
Oracle RAC One Node is a new option to the Oracle Enterprise Edition introduced with the Oracle Database 11.2.0.1. Oracle Enterprise Manager DB Control now recognizes Oracle RAC One Node databases and provides the required configuration options in an easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI), which simplifies the management of Oracle RAC One Node beyond the scope of the command-line tools that are already available.
Oracle RAC One Node allows the online relocation of an Oracle RAC One Node database from one server to another. The migration period can be customized up to 12 hours.
Oracle RAC One Node allows the online relocation of an Oracle RAC One Node database from one server to another, which provides increased availability for applications based on an Oracle Database. You can now move a database for workload balancing as well as for performing planned maintenance on the server, on the operating system, or when applying patches to the Oracle software in a rolling fashion.
Oracle RAC One Node is a new option to the Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. Oracle RAC One Node represents an Oracle RAC database that runs only one active database instance which can be managed using SRVCTL
as any other Oracle RAC database.
Using SRVCTL
simplifies and optimizes the management of Oracle RAC One Node databases.
The CRSCTL
command set has been enhancement to enable the management of various new Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster resources.
Using these new commands simplifies the management of Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster.
The SRVCTL
command set has been enhancement to enable the management of various new Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster and Oracle RAC resources.
Using these new commands simplifies the management of Oracle RAC and Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster.
To increase the manageability of XStream, new process parameters are added to provide capabilities such as process memory control, changes to sequences, and the ability to exclude changes performed by specific users or transactions. Repositioning within the stream by either SCN
or TIME
is available. In addition, new views specific to XStream are provided such as V$XSTREAM_OUTBOUND_SERVER
and V$XSTREAM_TRANSACTION
, and existing views have been extended to provide additional information such as the client status or memory utilization of a process.
These enhancements give the XStream user more control over and visibility into XStream processing.
Columnar compression is now supported with Oracle Streams and XStream.
This feature enables logical replication of tables compressed using Hybrid Columnar Compression.
The installation of Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 includes a software-only option. This wizard assists the administrator with completing the cluster configuration independently of the software installation.
The configuration wizard provides an easy-to-use interface to configure the cluster independently of the software installation. Post-installation configuration of the software at the customer site is a standing requirement.
Customers that need to be able to mass deploy Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster or that need to support remote installations benefit from this feature.
Oracle RAC requires a dedicated network connection between the servers of the Oracle RAC cluster. The dedicated network connection, called interconnect, is crucial for the communication in the cluster. Using redundant network connections for load balancing and for failure protection is recommended. While in previous releases, technologies like bonding or trunking had to be used to make use of redundant networks for the interconnect, Oracle Grid Infrastructure for a Cluster and Oracle RAC now provide a native way of using redundant network interfaces in order to ensure optimal communication in the cluster.
Using redundant interconnects optimizes the stability, reliability, and scalability of an Oracle RAC cluster.
New Features Guide
11g Release 2 (11.2)
E22487-04
December 2011
Oracle Database New Features Guide is addressed to those of you familiar with previous releases of Oracle Database and who would like to become familiar with features, options, and enhancements that are new in this release of the database.
Oracle Database New Features Guide, 11g Release 2 (11.2)
E22487-04
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This chapter contains descriptions of all of the features that are new to Oracle 11g Database, Release 2. This chapter contains the following sections:
The following sections describe the new application development features for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2).
The following sections describe Oracle Application Express features.
You can now define a date format to be used throughout an application. This date format is used to alter the NLS_DATE_FORMAT
database session setting prior to showing or submitting any page within the application. This format is used by all reports showing dates and is also picked up by form items of type "Date Picker (use Application Date Format)".
The ability to specify a date format at the application level ensures consistency across the application. Therefore, whenever dates are displayed or input, they are in the same format.
In addition to the default themes provided with Oracle Application Express, you can create your own customized themes. You can either start with one of the twenty standard themes available with Oracle Application Express and modify the underlying templates or define your own templates from scratch. Each theme consists of a set of templates defined with cascading style sheets (CSS) and HTML.
The ability to publish custom themes enables you to design a specific look and feel to meet your corporate requirements and then publish them as a theme for all other applications to use.
Declarative BLOB support enables files to be declaratively uploaded in forms, and downloaded or displayed using reports. BLOB display and download can also be authored procedurally using PL/SQL.
The storing of binary large objects (BLOBs) within the database is growing in popularity due to the many advantages over storing content on disparate file systems. By incorporating declarative support for managing BLOBs into Application Express, the loading and manipulating of content is greatly simplified.
This release includes an improved framework for advanced Oracle Application Express developers to build and leverage custom Web 2.0 capabilities, improving performance and enabling developers to create more dynamic application widgets. Oracle Application Express also includes the ability to suppress standard JavaScript and CSS files. All included JavaScript files are now compressed to improve page load time.
Many developers want to extend their applications to include additional Web 2.0 capabilities or to minimize the page weight for use on mobile devices such as iphones and smartphones. The documentation and declarative capabilities allow developers to design applications for these disparate requirements.
Release 3.1 includes XML as a download format and supports multiple SQL statements.
Oracle Application Express interactive reporting provides the ability to manipulate the way in which the data is displayed on the screen. Users can also download this data in various formats including PDF, RTF, XLS and now XML.
Forms Conversion captures the design of existing Oracle Forms and automatically converts some components, primarily the user interface. Other components, such as complex triggers, need to be manually converted post-generation.
Moving to native HTML is not seamless and changes to the user interface are required to deliver optimal Web interactivity.
The Oracle Application Express Forms Conversion enables you to take advantage of Oracle Application Express dynamic HTML capabilities, including interactive reports. Given the similarities between Oracle Forms and Oracle Application Express development (both use SQL and PL/SQL), retraining requirements are also low.
Oracle Application Express offers a number of security enhancements. Key enhancements include the ability to declaratively encrypt session state and specify session time outs for maximum idle time and maximum session duration as well as create new password item types that enable users to enter passwords without ever saving them to session state.
Other features include reducing the privileges required by the Oracle Application Express database account, disabling database monitoring by default, and the ability to specify HTTPS for administration. In addition, administrators can now restrict password reuse. This release also includes a new Hidden and Protected item type. This item type greatly simplifies the developer's task of protecting item session state. This, together with other minor improvements, makes the default security functionality more robust within Oracle Application Express.
The additional declarative security capabilities make it easier for developers and administrators to harden the security of their applications and the development environment. These new capabilities complement existing Oracle Application Express security features some of which include flexible authentication, authorization schemes, and URL tampering protection.
Interactive Reporting Regions enable end users to customize reports. Users can alter the layout of report data by choosing the columns they are interested in, applying filters, highlighting, and sorting. They can also define breaks, aggregations, different charts, and their own computations. Users can create multiple variations of the report and save them as named reports and download to various file formats including comma-delimited file (CSV) format, Microsoft Excel (XLS) format, Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), and Microsoft Word Rich Text Format (RTF).
Oracle Application Express Interactive Reporting enables developers to quickly develop reports that can be manipulated by end users to meet a wide range of reporting requirements. Therefore, instead of developers having to define specific report layouts for different users or groups, they can define a common report that can be used to meet the majority of the different requirements.
For testing and production instances, Oracle Application Express now supports the ability to install a runtime version of Oracle Application Express. This minimizes the installed footprint and privileges. Scripts are also provided to remove or add the developer interface from an existing instance.
The ability to implement a runtime-only environment improves application security as developers cannot inadvertently or maliciously update a production application.
The following sections describe new features in the areas of OCI, Pro*C, JDBC, and other development APIs.
The WITH HOLD
option can now be specified during cursor declaration.
This new option provides easy migration of Pro*C applications.
Oracle Call Interface (OCI) now provides Pro*C support for 8-byte native numeric host variable for INSERT
and FETCH
on 32-bit and 64-bit platforms.
Fusion applications need Pro*C to be able to support 8-byte native data type for bind/define while inserting or fetching data to and from a NUMBER(18)
column.
Oracle Call Interface (OCI) now provides Pro*COBOL support for 8-byte native numeric host variable for INSERT
and FETCH
on 32-bit and 64-bit platforms.
Fusion applications need Pro*COBOL to be able to support 8-byte native data type for bind/define while inserting or fetching data to and from a NUMBER(18)
column.
The JDBC driver is updated to conform with the new time zone upgrading scheme.
This feature provides a simplified time zone patching process. As a result, Java applications using the TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE
data type are immune to Daylight Saving Time (DST) changes.
JDBC now supports SecureFile zero-copy LOB I/O and LOB prefetching.
This feature allows performant and secure Java access to structured (relational) and unstructured data.
Oracle Call Interface (OCI) now provides support for 8-byte integer bind/define on 32-bit and 64-bit platforms.
Fusion applications need Pro*C or Pro*COBOL to be able to support 8-byte native data type for bind/define while inserting or fetching data to and from a NUMBER(18)
column. Pro*C or Pro*COBOL need this support from OCI to be able to pass it on to application developers.
The focus of this Availability section is aimed towards providing capabilities that keep the Oracle database available for continuous data access, despite unplanned failures and scheduled maintenance activities. These various capabilities form the basis of Oracle Maximum Availability Architecture (MAA), which is the Oracle blueprint for implementing a highly available infrastructure using integrated Oracle technologies.
The following sections describe new features in this release that provide improvements in the area of backup and recovery.
Automatic block repair allows corrupt blocks on the primary database or physical standby database to be automatically repaired, as soon as they are detected, by transferring good blocks from the other destination. In addition, RECOVER BLOCK
is enhanced to restore blocks from a physical standby database. The physical standby database must be in real-time query mode.
This feature reduces time when production data cannot be accessed, due to block corruption, by automatically repairing the corruptions as soon as they are detected in real-time using good blocks from a physical standby database. This reduces block recovery time by using up-to-date good blocks from a real-time, synchronized physical standby database as opposed to disk or tape backups or flashback logs.
Oracle now offers backup to Amazon S3, an internet-based storage service, with the Oracle Secure Backup (OSB) Cloud Module. This is part of the Oracle Cloud Computing offering.
This feature provides easy-to-manage, low cost database backup to Web services storage, reducing or eliminating the cost and time to manage an in-house backup infrastructure.
DUPLICATE
can be performed without connecting to a target database. This requires connecting to a catalog and auxiliary database.
The benefit is improved availability of a DUPLICATE
operation by not requiring connection to a target database. This is particularly useful for DUPLICATE
to a destination database where connection to the target database may not be available at all times.
Tablespace point-in-time recovery (TSPITR) is enhanced as follows:
You now have the ability to recover a dropped tablespace.
TSPITR can be repeated multiple times for the same tablespace. Previously, once a tablespace had been recovered to an earlier point-in-time, it could not be recovered to another earlier point-in-time.
DBMS_TTS.TRANSPORT_SET_CHECK
is automatically run to ensure that TSPITR is successful.
AUXNAME
is no longer used for recovery set data files.
This feature improves usability with TSPITR.
The following are new options for the DUPLICATE
command:
NOREDO
NOREDO
indicates that archive logs are not applied. Because targetless DUPLICATE does not connect to the target database, it cannot check if the database is running in NOARCHIVELOG
mode. It can also be used during regular duplication to force a database currently in ARCHIVELOG
mode to be recovered without applying archive logs (for example, because it was in NOARCHIVELOG
mode at the point-in-time it is being duplicated).
UNDO TABLESPACE <
tsname
> [ , <
tsname
> ... ]
When not connected to a recovery catalog and not connected to an open target database, RMAN cannot obtain the list of tablespaces with undo segments, therefore, you must specify them with this clause.
This feature improves the usability of the DUPLICATE command.
The following are new clauses and format options for the SET NEWNAME
command:
A single SET NEWNAME
command can be applied to all files in a tablespace, or for all files in the database. For example:
SET NEWNAME FOR TABLESPACE <tsname> TO <format>;
Or,
SET NEWNAME FOR DATABASE TO <format>;
New format identifiers for SET NEWNAME...<
format
>
are as follows:
%U
Unique identifier. data_D-%d_I-%I_TS-%N_FNO-%f
%b
UNIX base name of the original data file name. For example, if the original data file name was ORACLE_HOME/data/tbs_01.f
, then %b
is tbs_01.f
.
The benefit is improved flexibility of RESTORE
, DUPLICATE
, and TSPITR.
The DUPLICATE...TABLESPACE
and DUPLICATE... SKIP TABLESPACE
commands now perform the following initial checks:
Excluded tablespaces are checked to see if they contain any objects owned by SYS
.
DBMS_TTS.TRANSPORT_SET_CHECK
is run to ensure that the set of tablespaces being duplicated are self-contained before the actual duplicate process.
These checks are not possible for a targetless DUPLICATE
as they are required to be run at the target database.
This feature improves usability of DUPLICATE. Any tablespace issues are immediately identified prior to commencement of the actual duplicate operation.
The following sections describe online application maintenance and upgrade features.
Edition-based redefinition allows an application's database objects to be changed without interrupting the application's availability by making the changes in the privacy of a new edition. Every database has at least one edition. The DBA creates a new edition as a child of the existing one. The changes are made in the child edition while you continue to use the parent edition. When needed, changes to data are made safely by writing only to new columns or new tables not seen by the old edition. Editioning views expose a different projection of each changed table into each edition to allow each to see just its own columns. Crossedition triggers propagate data changes made by the old edition into the columns of the new edition. When the installation of the changes is complete, some users start to use the new edition while others drain off the old edition. Here, crossedition triggers propagate data changes made by the new edition into the columns of the old edition.
Large, mission critical applications are often unavailable for long periods of time while database objects are patched or upgraded. Edition-based redefinition allows this cost to be avoided.
The FORCE
option can now be used in conjunction with the CREATE
or REPLACE TYPE
command.
This feature provides enhanced usability and allows a CREATE
or REPLACE TYPE
operation to be performed even when TYPE
dependent objects are present. However, if at least one TABLE
dependent is present, then FORCE
does not allow CREATE
or REPLACE TYPE
to succeed.
Oracle Database 11g Release 1 (11.1) brought both fine-grained dependency tracking and the new possibility that a trigger might be a dependency parent by virtue of the new FOLLOWS
keyword.
In release 11.1, dependents on triggers did not have fine-grained dependency. In release 11.2, this fine-grained dependence exists. (Release 11.2 also provides the new PRECEDES
keyword which also allows trigger-upon-trigger dependencies.)
With INSERT INTO TARGET...SELECT...FROM SOURCE
, a unique key for some to-be-inserted rows may collide with existing rows. The IGNORE_ROW_ON_DUPKEY_INDEX
allows the collisions to be silently ignored and the non-colliding rows to be inserted. A PL/SQL program could achieve the same effect by first selecting the source rows and by then inserting them one-by-one into the target in a block that has a null handler for the DUP_VAL_ON_INDEX
exception. However, the PL/SQL approach would take effort to program and is much slower than the single SQL statement that this hint allows.
This hint improves performance and ease-of-programming when implementing an online application upgrade script using edition-based redefinition.
The following sections describe new features in this release that provide improvements in Oracle Data Guard.
Compressed tables (that is, tables with compression that support both OLTP and direct load operations) are supported in logical standby databases and Oracle LogMiner.
With support for this additional storage attribute, logical standby databases can now provide data protection and reporting benefits for a wider range of tables.
A physical standby database can be open for read-only access while redo apply is active only if the Oracle Active Data Guard option is enabled. This capability is known as real-time query.
The new STANDBY_MAX_DATA_DELAY
session parameter can be used to specify a session-specific apply lag tolerance, measured in seconds, for queries issued by non-administrative users to a physical standby database that is in real-time query mode.
This capability allows queries to be safely offloaded from the primary database to a physical standby database, because it is possible to detect if the standby database has become unacceptably stale.
Applications connected to a primary database can transparently failover to the new primary database upon an Oracle Data Guard role transition. Integration with Fast Application Notification (FAN) provides fast failover for integrated clients.
Flexibility and manageability of disaster recovery configurations using Oracle Data Guard is improved.
The number of standby databases that a primary database can support is increased from 9 to 30 in this release.
The capability to create 30 standby databases, combined with the functionality of the Oracle Active Data Guard option, allows the creation of reader farms that can be used to offload large scale read-only workloads from a production database.
The following sections describe new Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing features for Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2).
The following sections describe new and improved analytical capabilities in this release.
New and enhanced analytical functions are introduced in this release. A new ordered aggregate, LISTAGG
, concatenates the values of the measure column. The new analytic window function NTH_VALUE
(a generalization of existing FIRST_VALUE
and LAST_VALUE
functions) gives users the functionality of retrieving an arbitrary (or nth) record in a window.
The LAG
and LEAD
functions are enhanced with the IGNORE NULLS
option.
The new and enhanced SQL analytical functions allow more complex analysis in the database, using (simpler) SQL specification and providing better performance.
The SQL WITH
clause has been extended to enable formulation of recursive queries.
Recursive WITH
clause complies with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard. This makes Oracle ANSI-compatible for recursive queries.
The following sections describe new and improved data loading capabilities in this release.
EXECUTE
privilege is allowed for DIRECTORY
objects in this release. The ORACLE_LOADER
access driver creates a process that runs a user-specified program. That program must live in a directory path specified by a directory object defined in the database. Only a user that has been given EXECUTE access to the directory object is allowed to run programs in it.
This feature allows the DBA to control who is allowed to run preprocessors as part of loading data with external tables. It also allows the DBA to restrict which programs those users can run. No existing users with access to the directory object are allowed to run any programs from that directory unless the DBA gives them EXECUTE access to that directory.
The syntax for the ORACLE_LOADER
access driver is extended in this release to allow specification of a program to preprocess the data files that are read for the external table. The access parameters can specify the name of a directory object and the name of an executable file in that directory object. When the access driver needs to read data from a file, it creates a process that runs the specified program, passing in the name of the data file. The output from the program is passed into the access driver which parses the data into records and columns.
The initial use of this feature is by a customer who needs to load data that is stored in compressed files. The user specifies the name of the program used to decompress the file as part of the access parameters. The access driver reads the output of the decompression program.
Large customers want to load data from compressed files which requires less disk space and uses the I/O bandwidth between the disk and memory more efficiently.
The following sections describe new and improved partitioning capabilities in this release.
Virtual columns can be used as the primary or the foreign key column of a reference partition table.
Allowing the use of virtual columns for reference partitioned tables enables an easier implementation of various business scenarios using Oracle Partitioning.
System-managed domain indexes are now supported for list partitioned tables.
This feature provides enhanced completeness of domain-specific indexing support for partitioning to meet user requirements including Oracle XML DB. Performance of local domain indexes on list partitioned tables is improved in this release.
The following sections describe new and improved performance and scalability capabilities in this release.
Traditionally, parallel execution has enabled organizations to manage and access large amounts of data by taking full advantage of the I/O capacity of the system. In-memory parallel execution harnesses the aggregated memory in a system to enhance query performance by minimizing or even completely eliminating the physical I/O needed for a parallel operation. Oracle automatically decides if an object being accessed using parallel execution benefits from being cached in the SGA (buffer cache). The decision to cache an object is based on a well defined set of heuristics including size of the object and the frequency that it is accessed. In an Oracle RAC environment, Oracle maps fragments of the object into each of the buffer caches on the active instances. By creating this mapping, Oracle knows which buffer cache to access to find a specific part or partition of an object to answer a given SQL query.
In-memory parallel query harnesses the aggregated memory in a system for parallel operations, enabling it to scale out with the available memory for data caching as the number of nodes in a cluster increases. This new functionality optimizes large parallel operations by minimizing or even completely eliminating the physical I/O needed because the parallel operation can now be satisfied in memory.
When activated, Oracle determines the optimal degree of parallelism (DOP) for any given SQL operation based on the size of the objects, the complexity of a statement, and the existing hardware resources.
The database compensates for wrong or missing user settings for parallel execution, ensuring a more optimal resource consumption and overall system behavior.
The DBMS_PARALLEL_EXECUTE
package provides subprograms to allow a specified INSERT
, UPDATE
, DELETE
, MERGE
, or anonymous block statement to be applied in parallel chunks. The statement must have two placeholders that define the start and end limit of a chunk. Typically, these are values for the rowid or a surrogate unique key in a large table. But, when an anonymous block is used, the block can interpret the values arbitrarily. The package has subprograms to define ranges that cover the specified table. These include rule-based division of a table's rowid or key range and support user-defined methods. The SQL statement together with the set of chunk ranges define a task. Another subprogram starts the task. Each task is processed using a scheduler job and automatically commits when it completes. Progress is logged. Untried, successful, and failed chunks are flagged as such on task completion or interruption. Another subprogram allows the task to resume to try untried and failed chunks.
Many scenarios require the bulk transformation of a large number of rows. Using an ordinary SQL statement suffers from the all-or-nothing effect. In the common case, where the transformation of one row is independent of that of other rows, it is correct to commit every row that is transformed successfully and to roll back every row where the transformation fails. Some customers have implemented schemes to achieve this from scratch, using the Oracle Scheduler and suitable methods to record progress. This package provides a supported solution and adds database-wide manageability through new catalog views for parallel task metadata. The package is especially useful in online application upgrade scenarios to apply a crossedition trigger to all the rows in the table on which it is defined.
Fast refresh of a materialized view is now significantly faster due to reducing the time spent on log handling.
This provides significantly reduced maintenance time and more fast refreshes are possible.
The following sections describe improvements to the extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) capabilities available with Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB).
The mapping editor has been enhanced with advanced find capabilities to make it easier to locate and make updates to operators, groups, and attributes in a mapping diagram, in the Available Objects tab, and in the Selected Objects tab.
This feature enhances ETL mapping developer productivity, especially on large and complex mappings and, for example, when working with complex data sources with large numbers of tables, views, or columns.
Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) now offers metadata integration with Oracle Business Intelligence Standard Edition (Discoverer) as well as Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.
For Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBI EE), this feature allows derivation of ready-to-use physical, business model and presentation layer metadata from a data warehouse design, visualization and maintenance of the derived objects from within OWB, and deployment of the derived objects in the form of an RPD file that can be loaded into OBI EE.
Oracle Discoverer integration was added in a previous release, and includes derivation of metadata for Discoverer from the data warehouse design, and deploying those derived objects into Discoverer. In this release, similar capabilities are now available for OBI Enterprise Edition. All business intelligence application objects are modeled in OWB and can be included in lineage and impact analysis at the column level.
Customers using Oracle business intelligence tools with their Oracle data warehouses can get better answers from their warehouses faster, with no additional design or development effort.
In the mapping editor, users can now copy and paste operators within a mapping or across mappings, including attribute settings.
This enhancement saves time and reduces errors in the development of complex ETL mappings that reuse common or similar elements.
In the Design Center, there is now a dropdown list that displays the active configuration of the user.
This feature improves usability of the multi-configuration feature.
There are numerous support improvements for importing flat files, including a simplified Flat File Sampling wizard, support for multi-character and hexadecimal format delimiters and enclosures, simplified support for fixed format fields, and support for bulk flat file loads into heterogeneous targets.
Flat files are frequently used for simple and high performance data movement in ETL applications. These changes improve ETL developer productivity and provide flexible handling of flat files in more scenarios.
OWB now has improved support for table functions, including importing metadata for existing table functions, an editor for creating table functions from within OWB, and better support for table functions in mappings.
Improved support simplifies using table functions for much more flexible and powerful transformations, such as user-defined aggregations and data mining sampling operators.
It is now possible to add OWB experts to the mapping editor menu.
This feature makes it possible to enhance and extend the functionality of the mapping editor, improving developer productivity.
Expressions associated with operator attributes can now be entered directly into an Operator Edit Dialog or Expression Editor, rather than requiring that these expressions be entered into a property in the Property Inspector.
Developers can finish more of their work in one place when creating operators in ETL mappings, thus improving their productivity.
In the mapping editor, users can now temporarily or permanently group objects in the mapping editor so that they are collapsed to a single icon. This hides complexity in mappings. Users can also spotlight a single operator, which temporarily hides all objects in the mapping except for those objects that connect directly to the operator.
These features improve productivity for developers working with complex mappings with large numbers of operators.
The user interface for managing the registration of locations in control centers has been reworked to improve usability, especially when working with locations registered in multiple control centers.
This change improves productivity of OWB administrators responsible for managing locations across control centers.
The user interface for managing OWB locations has been reworked to improve usability and support access to non-Oracle data sources using newly supported connectivity methods.
These changes improve Oracle Warehouse Builder administrator and developer productivity in heterogeneous and Oracle-only environments.
Extensive changes have been made to the key lookup operator:
More efficient use of screen real estate.
Support for non-equality lookups.
Dynamic lookups, where the lookup table may be modified during the mapping execution.
These changes make the lookup operator more powerful in many situations, including improving Type 2 slowly changing dimension support.
There are numerous enhancements to the OWB mapping editor, including:
Improved support for watch points and enabling and disabling individual break points.
Support for user-defined type columns.
Enhanced support for numerous existing operators, such as VARRAY
, EXPAND
, and CONSTRUCT
.
Support for key lookup and table function operators.
Support for correlated joins.
Improved cleanup of debugger-specific objects.
These enhancements improve productivity for ETL mapping developers, especially when working with complex mappings where the mapping debugger adds the most value.
The Oracle Warehouse Builder Design Center user interface has been updated to use the Fusion Client Platform, the same core Integrated Development Environment (IDE) platform as Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle SQL Developer.
The advantages of this user interface include:
More efficient and flexible use of screen real estate.
Support for opening multiple editors of the same type, for example, editing several ETL mappings at once in different windows.
More consistent behavior across different parts of the OWB user interface.
This change brings Oracle Warehouse Builder Design Center in line with other development tools from Oracle. Developers experience increased productivity in the Oracle Warehouse Builder environment, which now benefits from the usability research behind the Fusion Client Platform and consistency with other Oracle products.
PL/SQL code generated for OWB ETL mappings now includes detailed comments to help developers associate specific operators in a mapping with sections of the generated code.
Developers can more easily troubleshoot issues with OWB-generated code that can only be detected when the code is deployed. This additional information enhances developer productivity.
In this release, Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) introduces a new spreadsheet-like dialog for connecting operators in a mapping. This functionality replaces the existing auto mapping dialog.
This improvement saves developer time and reduces errors when working with operators with a large number of inputs or outputs.