What's New in Oracle Database for Windows

This section describes new features of Oracle Database and provides pointers to additional information.

The following are the Windows specific new features:

• Secure Database Services

• Active Directory Security Enhancements

• Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) Writer

• Windows Operating System Support

• Support for Online Patching

Secure Database Services

In Oracle Database 11g, you can secure the Database Services data in the active directory, which is considered to be public. You can control the access to Database Services data by setting Access Control List (ACL) on it and allow only the authenticated users to access the data.

To use enhanced security in Oracle Database 11g, clients for Oracle Database 11g or later, must configure for authentication binds. However, clients of the earlier releases cannot access Database Services after setting restricted ACLs.

Active Directory Security Enhancements

This feature enhances security through better integration with the default Active Directory configuration, adding support for operating system authentication with Active Directory.

This feature improves Net Naming support for Microsoft Active Directory.

Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) Writer

The Oracle VSS writer allows Oracle Database to participate in VSS-initiated backup and recovery on Windows 2003 and above. VSS is a Windows infrastructure composed of three participants:

• Requesters - management applications that initiate backup and recovery

• Writers - applications that own the data

• Providers - storage/hardware applications that coordinate the reading and writing of the data to appropriate storage

Several leading backup and storage vendors currently provide requester and provider applications. With the Oracle VSS writer, customers can reliably back up and recover Oracle data in a VSS environment, which inter operates with these vendors' components.

This feature provides full inter operability with Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) infrastructure on Windows 2003 and above.

Windows Operating System Support

Starting with Oracle Database 11g Release 2, the following Windows operating systems are supported:

• Windows Server 2008 R2

• Windows 7

Support for Online Patching

An online patch is a special kind of patch that can be applied to a live, database instance. Installing an online patch does not require shutting down the database instance. An online patch can be installed or uninstalled using OPatch command. Starting with Oracle Database 11g Release 2, Online Patching is supported on 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms.