What's new?
- Transparent Application Failover (TAF) support
- Database Resident Connection Pooling (DRCP) support
- Wire Protocol driver
- Performance
- Oracle feature support
- Installer
- Data Type support
- New API calls
- New SQL features
- Fixes to problems
Transparent Application Failover (TAF) support
Transparent Application Failover (TAF) is a mechanism that enables client applications to automatically reconnect to a node of a RAC database cluster following a connection failure. There may be a delay associated with failing over to another node. To keep users informed and give them the option to interrupt the failover process, it is possible for an OCI application to register a callback function that is invoked in the event of a connection loss and during the course of the failover.
The Oracle ODBC driver now enables ODBC applications to register a failover callback function.
Further information
Database Resident Connection Pooling (DRCP) support
Database Resident Connection Pooling (DRCP) is a scalability feature introduced in Oracle 11g Release 1, which uses a combination of dedicated server and connection broker to handle short, transient sessions coming from Web applications. DRCP is especially relevant for architectures with multi-process, single-threaded application servers, such as PHP and Apache, that cannot do middle-tier connection pooling.
The Oracle ODBC driver now enables ODBC applications to configure the behaviour of DRCP. ODBC applications can:
- Request a brand new session if they cannot reuse a session from the pool.
- Specify a connection class that indicates that the application is willing to reuse a pooled server, which was used by other applications using the same connection class.
To configure DRCP, use the Pool_Purity and Pool_Connection_Class Oracle ODBC driver attributes.
Further information
Wire Protocol driver
Easysoft now provide a Wire Protocol (WP) version of the Oracle ODBC driver, which provides clientless, direct access to Oracle 8–23c.
Performance
Although the driver was previously one of the quickest available, we have improved the performance of the driver such that the fetching of data may now be 300% faster. This performance increase has been gained by analysis of typical use patterns and subsequent optimisation of the Oracle API calls. No additional changes are required to existing application code to take advantage of this extra performance, and there are no potential hidden costs to slow down other operations.
Oracle feature support
Additional support has been added for the following Oracle features:
- Now fully supports Instant Client libraries.
The OCI version of the Oracle ODBC driver and its support tools are Instant Client aware. The driver will work seamlessly with both the full Oracle client installation and the new Instant Client installation. The driver may be set to use a full client by the use of the
ORACLE_HOMEenvironment setting. An Instant Client-only connection may use the new connection string format (//host:port/sid). A mixed mode connection may also be used, employing theTNS_ADMINenvironment setting to enable the use of atnsnames.orafile with the Instant Client.The support tools provided with the driver let you check the configuration and will suggest possible problems and their solution.
- Fully supports Oracle Database XE.
This is discussed in the document Accessing Oracle Database XE by using the Oracle ODBC driver.
- Fully supports Oracle Advanced Security features, including authentication, validation, and encryption.
- Integrates with Transaction Monitors for Oracle XA distributed transaction support.
This is discussed in the document Oracle ODBC driver XA support.
Installer
The following changes have been made to the UNIX installation:
- The Oracle ODBC driver now supports non-root installations.
- Instant Client aware
The installer builds an Instant Client Connect URL for the sample ODBC data source, if it detects the Instant Client during setup.
Data type support
The following additional data types are supported:
TIMESTAMP_TZThis is a
TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONEtype, and it is mapped to anODBC SQL_TYPE_TIMESTAMP.TIMESTAMP_LTZThis is a
TIMESTAMP WITH LOCAL TIME ZONEtype, and it is also mapped to anODBC SQL_TYPE_TIMESTAMP.BIGINTIf an Oracle column is defined as a
NUMERICtype with a zero scale and a precision greater than 19 (the maximum that can fit into anODBC SQLINTEGERtype), the Oracle ODBC driver will map this as anSQL_BIGINT.
New API calls
The driver now supports the following ODBC API calls:
New SQL features
Positioned updates and deletes can now be done using SELECT ... FOR UPDATE OF statements.
Problem fixes
Many minor problems have been fixed in this release. These are described in the CHANGES.txt file included in the installation.
