When applications developers demand the most powerful interface to the Oracle Database Server, they call upon the Oracle Call Interface (OCI). OCI provides the most comprehensive access to all of the Oracle Database functionality. The newest performance, scalability, and security features appear first in the OCI API.

A broad range of customers employ OCI including:

• Large Fortune 500 customers developing complex database applications.
• ISVs tailoring the Oracle Database to suit their needs

If you write applications for the Oracle Database, you likely already depend on OCI.  Some types of applications that depend upon OCI are:

• PL/SQL applications executing SQL
• C++ applications using OCCI
• Java applications using the OCI-based JDBC driver
• C applications using the ODBC driver
• VB applications using the OLEDB driver
• .NET applications using the ODP.NET driver
• Pro*C applications
• Distributed SQL

OCI in Oracle 11g has new features in scalability, performance and diagnosability areas. Some of them are:

• Database Resident Connection Pooling
• Client side Result Cache
• Runtime Connection Load Balancing
• Binding and Defining Multiple Buffers
• Prefetching of LOB data
• Drop-in compatibility with 10g
• Fault Diagnosability

New features for OCI in Oracle 10g include:

• Instant Client and Instant Client Light
• IEEE 754 floating point number support (binary_float/binary_double)
• Unlimited size LOB support
• High Availability Event Notification
• Database DML/DDL Change Notification
• Startup/Shutdown Database

Instant Client gives ISVs and customers the ability to quickly install and deploy Oracle applications without any of the hassle. Please see the Instant Client site for more information.

Key benefits of OCI include:

• Instant availability and leverageability of the latest Oracle Database server features
• Enterprise level performance and scalability
• A robust security model
• Portability across all platforms running Oracle

The Oracle OCI features include significant improvements in performance and ease of use and other major enhancements. The wide product usage and strong integration with the database, backed by a strong growing engineering organization, make it the language of choice for developing secure, performance critical, data intensive applications that can easily scale to meet the needs of your enterprise.