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Oracle® Call Interface Programmer's Guide, 10g Release 2 (10.2) Part Number B14250-02 |
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# What's New in Oracle Call Interface?

The following sections describe the new features in this Oracle Call Interface manual:

- New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 10.2

- New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 10.1

## New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 10.2

- Instant Client Light (English) further reduces the footprint of Instant Client.

  See Also: "InstantClient Light (English)"

- Database startup and shutdown can now be done from OCI.

  See Also: "Database Startup and Shutdown"

- You can obtain the client library version at compile-time and runtime.

  See Also: "OCIClientVersion()"

- A new user handle session attribute, OCI_ATTR_CURRENT_SCHEMA, which has the same functionality as the SQL command `ALTER` `SESSION` `SET` `CURRENT_SCHEMA`, is described in "OCI_ATTR_CURRENT_SCHEMA".

- `OCIDirPathFlushRow()` was deprecated. There are small changes in the Direct Path interfaces that are in the following sections:

  See Also: "OCI_DIRPATH_COL_ERROR" "Direct Path Loading of SQL String Columns" "OCIDirPathColArrayToStream()" "OCIDirPathLoadStream()"

- OCI clients can register for Real Application Clusters (RAC) high availability events and decide on actions for each event.

  See Also: "HA Event Notification" "Event Handle Attributes"

- Restrictions on selecting remote LOB data defined as character or raw datatypes by means of the data interface are eased.

  See Also: "Creating and Modifying Persistent LOBs" and the subsequent sections

- Two new functions read and write LOB data for multiple locators in one server round trip.

  See Also: "OCILobArrayRead()" "OCILobArrayWrite()" "Using OCILobArrayRead() and OCILobArrayWrite()"

- For `NCHAR` literal support in OCI, new values of the parameter `mode` (`OCI_NCHAR_LITERAL_REPLACE_ON` and `OCI_NCHAR_LITERAL_REPLACE_OFF`) in the following functions control N' substitution:

  See Also: "OCIEnvCreate()" "OCIEnvNlsCreate()"

- The Notifications Enhancement project improves event notification.

  See Also: "Publish-Subscribe Notification in OCI" "Subscription Handle Attributes" for new attributes `OCI_ATTR_SUBSCR_PORTNO`, `OCI_ATTR_SUBSCR_QOSFLAGS`, `OCI_ATTR_SUBSCR_TIMEOUT`

- Buffered messaging is now supported within the Streams Advanced Queueing capability.

  See Also: "Buffered Messaging" for concepts "Streams Advanced Queuing and Publish-Subscribe Functions" for the function reference pages "OCIAQListen2()" for a new function "Streams Advanced Queuing Descriptor Attributes"

- Database change notification enables client applications to receive notifications when the result set of a registered query has changed.

  See Also: "Database Change Notification" "Change Notification Attributes" "Change Notification Descriptor Attributes"

- Asynchronous commit allows the programmer greater control by using new values for the `flags` parameter when making calls to `OCITransCommit()`:

  See Also: "OCITransCommit()"

- An Oracle wallet is a secure software container used to store authentication and signing credentials.

  See Also: "Secure External Password Store"

- Application context enables developers to define, set, and access application attributes.

  See Also: "Client Application Context"

- Proxy access for a single client can be set using various connect strings.

  See Also: "Client Access Through a Proxy"

- `OCIPing()` is used to confirm that the server connection and the server are active. It also can be used to flush all the pending OCI client-side calls to the server.

  See Also: "OCIPing()"

- Windows NT is no longer supported for OCI. The only Microsoft Visual C++ releases supported for the current OCI release are 7.0 and higher.

  See Also: Appendix D, "Getting Started with OCI for Windows"

- Transparent Application Failover (TAF) is enabled for connection pooling.

  See Also: "Transparent Application Failover"

- OCI Scrollable Cursors now works for remote mapped queries. Transparent Application Failover (TAF ) works with OCI Scrollable cursors.

  See Also: "Scrollable Cursors in OCI"

## New Features in Oracle Call Interface Release 10.1

- Native float and double are supported.

  See Also: "BINARY_FLOAT and BINARY_DOUBLE" "Native Float and Native Double"

- `OCIDescribeAny()` supports rules, rule sets, and evaluation contexts.

  See Also: "Rule Attributes", and so on

- The OCI Instant Client capability simplifies OCI installation and saves disk space for application deployment.

  See Also: "OCI Instant Client"

- Additional information on upgrading to a new release of OCI is available.

  See Also: "Compatibility and Upgrading"

A new discussion describes when to use session pooling or connection pooling.

See Also: "When to Use Connection Pooling, Session Pooling, or Neither"

- Batch array enqueue and dequeue functions and attributes have been added.

  See Also: "OCI and Streams Advanced Queuing" "Streams Advanced Queuing and Publish-Subscribe Functions" "Streams Advanced Queuing Descriptor Attributes"

- LOBs can be of greater size than 4 GB. There are several new LOB functions whose names end in "2" that handle LOBs greater and smaller than 4 GB, and replace deprecated LOB functions without "2".

  See Also: "Using LOBs of Size Greater than 4 GB" "LOB Functions"

- Database Globalization Support is now described in this manual.

  See Also: "OCI Globalization Support" "OCI Globalization Support Functions"

- Statement Caching has been enhanced.

  See Also: "Statement Caching in OCI"

- Windows documentation is now included in this guide.

  See Also: Appendix D, "Getting Started with OCI for Windows"

- There is OCI support for the unified C API which is used for `XMLType` columns in tables (and XML documents).

  See Also: "OCI Support for XML" Chapter 22, "OCI XML DB Functions"

- There are new or modified functions.

  See Also: "OCICollGetElemArray()" "OCINumberToRealArray()"

- New modes `OCI_BIND_SOFT` and `OCI_DEFINE_SOFT` are documented.

  See Also: "OCIBindByName()" "OCIBindByPos()" "OCIDefineByPos()"

- New attributes for end-to-end application tracing are described.

  See Also: "End-to-End Application Tracing" "User Session Handle Attributes"

- New attributes for Direct Path are described.

  See Also: "Direct Path Context Handle (OCIDirPathCtx) Attributes" "Direct Path Context Handle (OCIDirPathCtx) Attributes"