Oracle Provider for OLE DB in Oracle 10g
Features Overview
March
2004
Product Summary
The Oracle Provider for OLE DB gives Windows developers high
performance and efficient access to Oracle databases. OLE DB is a
Microsoft specification for a set of COM interfaces used to access and manipulate
data. Developers can use the Oracle
Provider for OLE DB from any COM client such as Visual Basic, Internet Information Server (IIS), and COM+/Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), via Microsoft's ActiveX Data Objects (ADO).
Developers can also code directly to the
OLE DB interfaces using a language such as C or C++. The Oracle Provider for OLE DB is also fully compatible with OLE DB .NET, however the Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET) is the best choice for .NET developers.
Because the Oracle OLE DB provider uses the latest
Oracle10g technology, Oracle OLE DB offers data access
optimizations and access to Oracle-specific database features, such
as support for LOBs, PL/SQL stored procedures, and REF CURSORs. All
these Oracle features and data access optimizations are generally
not available in other third-party Oracle OLE DB providers or the OLE DB-ODBC bridge. By
adhering closely to the latest Microsoft OLE DB specification, the
Oracle provider allows ADO and OLE DB .NET developers to take full advantage of OLE
DB without having to sacrifice use of Oracle database server
functionality.
Oracle10g, Oracle9i, and Oracle8i,
database servers can all be used in conjunction with the
Oracle10g OLE DB client software. The latest features in the
Oracle10g OLE DB provider are highlighted in this
paper.
Components
The Oracle Provider for OLE DB is designed to improve data access
performance and reliability for ADO developers. It uses direct
Oracle Call Interface (OCI) connections, rather than utilizing ODBC
as a bridge to OCI. The figure below demonstrates typical data
access using ADO/OLE DB and the ADO/OLE DB-ODBC Bridge.
By using the provider, application developers minimize the number
of intermediaries data must travel through. This allows
data to go through the most direct path possible with OLE DB. At the
same time, the Oracle OLE DB provider has been optimized because it
uses Oracle10g OCI calls to maximize performance and expose
the latest database features. In general, other third-party OLE DB
providers written for Oracle may use older OCI calls, which can
limit data access performance and feature set.
Oracle's OLE DB provider has been built to handle the
high-volume, high-load of Internet application environments. The
Oracle Provider for OLE DB leverages Oracle's proven Internet
infrastructure to ensure a highly reliable, fast-performing and
secure data access.
Features
The Oracle Provider for OLE DB supports the
following features:
- Fully compatible with OLE DB .NET
- Scrollable and updateable rowsets
- ANSI SQL supported by Oracle and the ODBC SQL syntax
- OS authentication, which allows Oracle to authorize users via
the operating system's security mechanisms
- Several schema rowsets
- Updateable rowsets created using joins (available with the
client cursor engine)
- Transactions support
- Local transactions supporting the
ITransactionLocal interface
- Distributed transactions through COM+/Microsoft Transaction
Server (MTS)
- Database links support
- Unicode support
- ADOX support
The Oracle Provider for OLE DB also
supports the following Oracle-specific features:
- Oracle10g Grid enabled, allowing developers to take full advantage of
grid support without changes being required to existing code
- PL/SQL stored procedures/functions
- Stored procedures/functions returning a rowset or multiple
rowsets
- LOB parameters with PL/SQL stored procedures/functions
- LOBs (LONG, LONG RAW, BLOB, CLOB, NCLOB, and BFILE)
- Binding NCHAR parameters with SQL statements
- Oracle Password Expiration feature
- Support for BINARY_FLOAT, BINARY_DOUBLE, TIMESTAMP and
INTERVAL datatypes
- Support for Multiple Oracle Homes
New Features in
Oracle10g
Transparent Oracle 10g Grid Support
The Oracle Provider for OLE DB is grid enabled.
To take full advantage of the power of Oracle 10g
grid technology, no code changes are required! The Oracle Provider for OLE DB automatically
recognizes when it is connected to a database grid and provides full
support for Oracle grid features.
Support for New Oracle 10g Datatypes
The Oracle Provider for OLE DB includes significant support for new Oracle data types.
BINARY_DOUBLE and BINARY_FLOAT data types represent single-precision
and double-precision floating-point values that mostly conform to
the IEEE754 standard for Floating Point Arithmetic.
These new types enable faster arithmetic calculations and reduce storage
requirements. They also enable you to implement published algorithms that specify IEEE behavior for arithmetic operations. Intense number
crunching computations (whose scale and precision requests can be accommodated by the IEEE types) will run very substantially faster using these types than
using NUMBER. Additionally, this feature enables cleaner integration with XML and Java environments because it provides similar numeric datatypes for
those environments.
The Oracle Provider for OLE DB also provides support for the TIMESTAMP and INTERVAL datatypes.
These represent improvements over the DATE data type with greater information included and a higher precision. The TIMESTAMP data types can provide time zone information and have precision up to the nanosecond. The two Oracle INTERVAL types provide year to month and day to nanosecond information when comparing timestamps.
Support for Multiple Oracle Homes
The Oracle Provider for OLE DB can be installed in a Multiple Oracle Home environment beginning with Oracle Database 10g. However, because the Oracle Provider for OLE DB is a COM component, only one instance can be active at a time. This means that a later OLE DB installation will render the previous one inactive. A client can toggle between installed OLE DB client releases by using Oracle Installer.
Conclusion
The Oracle Provider for OLE DB provides high performance and
reliable access to Oracle databases for ADO- or OLE DB-enabled
applications. Current ADO and OLE DB programmers will able to easily
migrate to the Oracle provider since it complies with the latest OLE
DB and ADO specifications and allows access to Oracle-specific
features. By using the Oracle10g Provider for OLE DB, Oracle
users will find their applications more scalable and robust.
Oracle Corporation
World Headquarters
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Parkway
Redwood Shores, CA 94065
U.S.A.
Worldwide Inquiries:
+1.650.506.7000
Fax
+1.650.506.7200
http://www.oracle.com/
Copyright © Oracle Corporation
2004
All Rights Reserved
This document is provided for informational purposes only, and
the information herein is subject to change without notice. Please
report any errors herein to Oracle Corporation. Oracle Corporation
does not provide any warranties covering and specifically disclaims
any liability in connection with this document.
Oracle, Oracle8i, Oracle9i, Oracle10g, and PL/SQL are a trademarks of Oracle
Corporation.
All other company and product names mentioned are used for
identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their
respective owners.
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