| Oracle® Database New Features Guide 10g Release 1 (10.1) Part Number B10750-01 |
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| Oracle® Database New Features Guide 10g Release 1 (10.1) Part Number B10750-01 |
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View PDF |
This chapter contains descriptions of all of the features that are new to Oracle Database 10g. This chapter contains the following sections:
This version of the Oracle Database has been designed to meet two key goals: reducing the cost of manageability and delivering increased performance for all key workloads. In all areas, manageability and performance have been significantly improved.
In addition, new capabilities that support the provisioning and virtualization of computing resource in a Grid environment are provided, allowing users to take advantage of low cost hardware and storage.
Major new high-availability features are also provided, including new Flashback capabilities that reduce the downtime caused by human errors. In addition, support for rolling upgrades has been provided to reduce the downtime associated with database and application upgrades.
Security improvements in this release focus on improved administration of large numbers of users across an integrated end-to-end environment, and support for key security technologies.
Business intelligence solutions will benefit from improvements in SQL analytical, OLAP, and data mining capabilities. The ability to better support and more efficiently load and refresh larger databases is also improved. This version also provides support for key requirements in the area of bioinformatics.
Support for nonrelational data stored in a database has also been improved in this release, with new formats for multimedia data, addition of text classification capabilities, and improvements in search and retrieval capabilities. Spatial query performance has also been improved, and support for new spatial data models and data types have been provided XML capabilities have also been expanded to focus on the effective management of large amounts of XML data stored natively in the database.
Application development improvements include a new built-in application development environment, support for a high-performance and highly integrated XML capability across the entire technology stack, and a framework provided with the database that enables desktop and middle-tier applications to retrieve and extract data from the database using standard Web Services mechanisms.
One of the major value propositions for this release of the Oracle Database is a significant reduction in the management cost of deploying and maintaining an Oracle-based solution. A number of major developments in this area incorporate new techniques and methodologies across the entire database platform. The approach taken is threefold:
Much of the complexity previously associated with configuring and deploying an Oracle database has been eliminated or simplified.
Wherever possible, common operating procedures have been automated.
Many of the activities required to tune and manage different areas of the Oracle Database have been greatly simplified.
In this release, the overall footprint of the Oracle Database has been significantly reduced. For those upgrading from previous versions, new, easy upgrade capabilities have been provided that greatly reduce the steps required to upgrade an Oracle Database. Optimal database configuration has been made much easier with the initial release. Administrators need to be aware of only a small number of basic initialization parameters that they can use to configure and tune their environment. Many of the other tasks associated with database configuration have also been eliminated or automated. Any future patch sets required during the life of the database can be automatically identified, downloaded, and applied from OracleMetaLink.
The installation process for the database has been enhanced to reduce install time, system resource requirements (CPU, memory, and disk space), and number of installation CDs.
You can now use the Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) to configure Automatic Storage Management for conventional and Oracle Real Application Clusters environments.
You can now use the DBCA to automatically configure Oracle Real Application Clusters environments.
The Database Upgrade Assistant (DBUA) enables you to create services for workload management when you upgrade from a previous Oracle cluster software release.
The Oracle Enterprise Manager repository, job, and event subsystems are now configured automatically, eliminating the need for manual setup.
The Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) automatically installs and starts the integrated clusterware and its related components for Oracle Real Application Clusters.
The Database Configuration Assistant (DBCA) now automatically configures a default recovery area.
The new directory configuration by the DBCA eliminates the need for an ldap.ora file by using a network API.
Initialization parameters are now divided into two groups, basic and advanced. In the vast majority of cases, it is necessary to set and tune only the basic parameters, of which there are 20 to 25, to get reasonable performance from the database. In rare situations, modification of the advanced parameters may be needed to achieve optimal performance.
Database creation now enables specification of a default tablespace for storing permanent objects for all users created. This eliminates the need to use the SYSTEM tablespace.
This feature reduces the number of steps needed to upgrade a database and its installed components, which greatly simplifies the database upgrade process.
This new tool facilitates successful database upgrade by performing some preliminary checks on the existing database (for example, whether there is enough space, whether there are any obsolete initialization parameters, and so forth), and by providing an estimate of how long the database upgrade will take.
See Oracle Real Application Clusters Installation and Configuration Guide for information on Real Application Clusters installation in general as well as information on the Oracle Universal Installer Storage Configuration, the DBCA Service Management features of Real Application Clusters, and Oracle Universal Installer clusterware setup.
This release greatly simplifies Oracle network management by eliminating the need to manually configure the Oracle networking environment. It is now possible to connect to a database from a client machine without creating the client configuration files. A number of shared server parameters are now automatically configured, and it is now possible to switch back and forth between dedicated and shared server mode online.
You can now export directory naming entries into a local tnsnames.ora file. Clients can use the locally saved file when a directory server is unavailable or when clients have not been upgraded to use directory naming.
You can now easily change Connection Manager (CMAN) parameters without shutting down the CMAN process.
This feature simplifies network management by enabling a database connection to be completed without the need to first configure a net service name or perform other net configuration on the client. It also enables a connection to different databases or instances running on the same computer.
A new API provides an efficient event-based nonblocking abstraction that supports multiple connections. Oracle clients and servers can now avoid being blocked on a network I/O request.
A client Oracle home no longer requires the directory usage configuration file (ldap.ora) to use LDAP naming. If an Oracle Internet Directory Server is registered with the Domain Name System (DNS), clients can automatically locate a directory server, and can be mapped to a particular Oracle Context, eliminating the need for local configuration. However, if the ldap.ora file is configured, it supersedes the auto-discovery mechanism.
This feature eases configuration and provides more flexibility when specifying access rules for Connection Manager (CMAN). You can filter traffic for CMAN based on timeout, subnet mask, idle timeout, and other rule-level controls.
A number of architectural enhancements have been introduced in this release to facilitate current and future self-management activities. They include a common infrastructure to store all auxiliary metadata and workload information, new monitoring tools and statistics to optimize performance tuning, and a more accurate and efficient wait statistics collection facility.
This release of the database automatically tracks usage (configuration, runtime, or both) of various database features. This enables the user to collect features' usage for future evaluation.
This feature enables the database to keep track of the time spent in performing internal operations such as parse, execute, input/output, and so on. This information is used by the database for making self-tuning decisions and makes it much easier to diagnose performance problems.
This feature simplifies the debugging of performance problems in multitier environments. It also makes debugging and tracing of applications, which use MODULE and ACTION name annotation, easier and more efficient. Further, it supports workload management based on service levels and priorities for applications using services.
Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) enables you to monitor, trace, and correlate resource consumption of Java, Web Applications and EJB components down to the database operation level.
This new system-owned tablespace provides a centralized location for all auxiliary database metadata that does not reside in the SYSTEM tablespace. It reduces the number of tablespaces created by default, both in the seed database and in user-defined databases.
The database Scheduler can schedule routine administration tasks, such as collecting optimizer statistics during a pre-defined maintenance window.
This release of the database will proactively send alerts and notifications to administrators when a problem is anticipated or any of the user-selected metrics exceeds a defined threshold.
A new, embedded, and completely self-managing repository captures workload information and performance-related statistics, thereby reducing administrative costs. The database uses information contained in the repository for all self-management activities.
This release adds several features to make the management of database storage more simplified, flexible and automated. The first of these features is Automatic Storage Management, which is a vertically integrated volume manager and file system built for Oracle data files. Two other features that help simplify management of database storage are rename tablespace and multiple default temporary tablespaces.
You can now define more than one default temporary tablespace, and a single SQL operation can use more than one temporary tablespace for sorting. This feature enables you to create indexes on very large tables without being limited by the size of one tablespace, because the sort operation during index creation can be distributed across multiple tablespaces.
Automatic Storage Management automates and simplifies the optimal layout of datafiles, control files, and log files. Database files are automatically distributed across all available disks, and database storage is rebalanced whenever the storage configuration changes. This feature also provides redundancy through the mirroring of database files.
You can now rename a tablespace. You no longer have to create a new tablespace, copy the contents from the old tablespace, and drop the old tablespace. This feature makes it easier, for example, to migrate a dictionary-managed tablespace to be locally managed, or to transport a tablespace to a database that already contains a tablespace of the same name.
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See Also: Oracle Database Concepts for more general information Oracle Database Administrator's Guide for information on multiple default temporary tablespaces, Automatic Storage Management, and renaming tablespaces Oracle Database SQL Reference for information on creating multiple temporary tablespaces, creating diskgroups, and renaming tablespaces |
New capabilities have been introduced to simplify object, space and transaction management. Proactive monitoring features have been introduced, capabilities for more efficient space management have been added, manual database administrator tasks have been automated, and new server advisors have been provided to facilitate advice-based intelligent management.
This feature automatically tunes the initialization parameter UNDO_RETENTION, that is used to control retention of undo information in rollback segments. Automatic Undo Retention Tuning enables the database server to make a best effort at adjusting to changes in undo requirements of user queries, with changes in system activity given the space previously allocated to the undo tablespace. It thus relieves the administrators from the task of constantly tuning the parameter UNDO_RETENTION.
The Segment Advisor, based on the level of space fragmentation within an object, gives advice on whether an object is a good candidate for the new online shrink operation. The Advisor also reports on the historical growth trend of segments. This information is very useful or capacity planning purposes.
This feature facilitates space management by giving an estimate of the size of a table or index before it is created, so that an administrator can ensure that sufficient space is available.
This feature shrinks segments online and in-place (tables, indexes, and materialized views) that have free space in them, thereby enhancing efficiency of space utilization.
This release simplifies the implementation and on-going maintenance of your data protection strategy. Recovery Manager (RMAN) now provides backup compression to keep backups on disk when space is a premium and enhanced RMAN scripting capabilities that allow you to modify them using your favorite text editor. Oracle Enterprise Manager has added new backup management functionality to provide easy configuration and monitoring of your backups.
Recovery Manager provides enhanced reporting. It can now list the backups required to restore a database and the backups required to restore archive logs.
If disk space is an issue, or your media-management software does not support compression, Recovery Manager (RMAN) provides the ability to compress RMAN backup sets.
You can use the new DURATION option to give an RMAN BACKUP command a limit on the amount of time that the backup is allowed to take. You can also control I/O by specifying a window of time in which a backup can run.
Recovery Manager (RMAN) now enables database administrators to easily view all scripts that are stored in the recovery catalog. Using a text editor, an administrator can create and test an RMAN script before saving it into a recovery catalog. If the script needs to be edited, the administrator can write the script to a file to make necessary changes.
Automated instance tuning capabilities have been provided that greatly simplify an administrator's life. The built-in resource management available in the Oracle Database has been expanded to include CPU usage quotas, allowing administrators to easily set best operating procedures for all types of resource allocation. This in turn makes it very easy to provide predictable response times for key business operations. In addition, new methods of identifying resource consumption groups allow existing applications to take advantage of these capabilities without application changes. This release also supports automated checkpoint tuning, which takes advantage of periods of low I/O usage to advance checkpoints and therefore improve availability.
This feature makes it easier to use Database Resource Manager without requiring any application changes.
The enhanced Oracle Enterprise Manager HTML interface provides a central point of access to all database performance-related statistics and facilitates complete monitoring and diagnostics.
The new Oracle Enterprise Manager HTML interface for analyzing SQL, including Top SQL, helps detect bad SQL and facilitates easy tuning.
This feature enables the database to self-analyze its performance. The database can identify potential bottlenecks and fix them automatically or recommend a solution to an administrator. This capability is built inside the database kernel and hence does not require any external tools.
This feature recommends the optimal size of redo log files in order to avoid excessive disk I/Os due to frequent checkpointing.
The Oracle Database can now self-tune checkpointing to achieve good recovery times with low impact on normal throughput. You no longer have to set any checkpoint-related parameters.
Automatic Shared Memory Tuning automates the configuration of System Global Area (SGA) memory-related parameters (buffer cache, shared pool) through self-tuning algorithms. It simplifies database configuration, ensures most efficient utilization of available memory and improves performance.
This feature enables you estimate how long it will take to roll back a transaction. You can also monitor the progress of transactions being recovered and estimate the average speed of transaction recovery.
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See Also: PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference for information on the Database Resource Manager Oracle Database Administrator's Guide for information on the Database Resource Manager Oracle Database Concepts for more information about the Database Resource Manager, advisors, and other manageability features |
New tools have been introduced in this release to minimize the manual SQL tuning efforts. These tools provide advice to administrators on new indexes or materialized views that can be created to optimize SQL performance and suggest changes to existing indexes and materialized views in order to make them more effective.
SQL Tuning Advisor is a new server tool that eliminates manual tuning of SQL statements as an input and gives advice in the form of precise SQL actions for tuning the SQL along with their expected performance benefit. This feature also introduces a new capability for SQL tuning of packaged applications without requiring any modification to the application code.
The SQLAccess Advisor is an expert system that identifies and helps resolve performance problems relating to the execution of SQL statements by recommending which indexes or materialized views to create, drop, or retain.
The new TUNE_MVIEW API advises what changes you need to make to a materialized view to make it fast refreshable and eligible for advanced query rewrite techniques.
This feature automates the collection of optimizer statistics for objects. Oracle gathers statistics on all database objects automatically that have stale or missing statistics and maintains those statistics in a regularly-scheduled maintenance job. Automated statistics collection eliminates many of the manual tasks associated with managing the query optimizer, and significantly reduces the chances of getting poor execution plans because of out of date statistics.
The utilities that support the database have also been improved in this release, to take advantage of the new capabilities, as well as address some common requirements requested by customers.
SQL*Plus and iSQL*Plus have been improved in this release to take advantage of new capabilities, and provide improved functionality. In addition, newer versions of Import and Export, based on Oracle Data Pump technology, provide very fast and powerful loading and unloading of data.
SET PAGESIZE 14 and SET SQLPLUSCOMPATIBILITY 8.1.7 commands have been removed from the gloglin.sql file. The default for SET PAGESIZE is 14. The default for SET SQLPLUSCOMPATIBILITY is 10.1.
SHOW RECYCLEBIN [original_name] enables you to view objects that are available for purging or reverting using the PURGE and FLASHBACK BEFORE DROP commands.
The glogin.sql and login.sql scripts are now read after each CONNECT command, rather than just when SQL*Plus is started, affording easy per-connection configuration.
SQL*Plus now displays any DBMS_OUTPUT information generated as the result of a procedure or trigger in a SELECT statement. This feature improves PL/SQL debugging and reporting capabilities.
SQL*Plus now supports the -C command line option. You can use this to set the initial value of the SQLPLUSCOMPATIBILITY parameter, giving you more control over SQL*Plus script behavior.
This feature lets you identify the schema and server you are connected to. Substitution variables are now dereferenced in the user prompt. New predefined variables exist for the username, connection privilege, and current date.
The SPOOL command has been enhanced to include CREATE, REPLACE, and APPEND options. These provide better control over output file creation and bring SPOOL syntax into line with the SAVE and STORE commands.
The Data Pump Export and Import utilities provide very high-speed bulk movement of data and metadata from one database to another. These utilities offer several significant advantages over the original Export and Import utilities, including: the ability to completely restart export and import jobs; the ability to detach and re-attach to long-running jobs; the ability to estimate how much disk space an export job would consume; support for export and import operations over the network; and support for fine-grained object selection, based upon object and object types.
As with previous releases, this release also focuses on continuing to deliver the high levels of performance and scalability the Oracle Database is renowned for.
In this release, many database components have been optimized, resulting in higher performance for transaction processing as well as data warehousing. Performance tuning has also been made simpler and more automated. There are also platform-specific enhancements for the Intel Itanium2 architecture, 64-bit Windows and Infiniband.
IOTs add bitmap index support for (range/hash/list) partitioned IOTs to enhance performance of operations on partitioned IOTs.
IOTs save space when a secondary index defined on an IOT includes columns that are also in the IOT primary key. This improves performance as well because fewer blocks are accessed.
This feature adds interfaces to enable a user to specify Send and Receive buffer sizes associated with a transport connection, thus improving network performance, especially in bulk data transfer such as replication, data warehousing, data mining, and so on.
This feature enables the use of single-set aggregation functions in the RETURNING clause of DML statements. This capability can result in significant performance gains in transactions that process many rows of the same table, a behavior often observed in batch processes.
Oracle protocol support now includes support for the industry-standard Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP) for Infiniband high-speed networks. The SDP protocol is a high-speed communication protocol that speeds up performance of client/server and server/server connections. By using SDP, applications place most of the messaging burden upon the network interface card, freeing the CPU for other tasks.
Sorted hash clusters are new data structures that enable faster retrieval of data for applications where data is consumed in the order in which it was inserted.
This feature improves performance on Microsoft Windows platforms by enabling Oracle to use Windows fibers.
The Oracle Database has been enhanced for increased performance on 64-bit Windows. This performance improvement is transparent, requiring no database parameter changes.
SQL Tuning Advisor is a new server tool that eliminates manual tuning of SQL statements as an input and gives advice in the form of precise SQL actions for tuning the SQL along with their expected performance benefit. This feature also introduces a new capability for SQL tuning of packaged applications without requiring any modification to the application code.
The SQLAccess Advisor is an expert system that identifies and helps resolve performance problems relating to the execution of SQL statements by recommending which indexes or materialized views to create, drop, or retain.
The new TUNE_MVIEW API advises what changes you need to make to a materialized view to make it fast refreshable and eligible for advanced query rewrite techniques.
This feature automates the collection of optimizer statistics for objects. Oracle gathers statistics on all database objects automatically that have stale or missing statistics and maintains those statistics in a regularly-scheduled maintenance job. Automated statistics collection eliminates many of the manual tasks associated with managing the query optimizer, and significantly reduces the chances of getting poor execution plans because of out of date statistics.
This release continues to address key requirements in the area of providing reliable, scalable processing power on clusters of machines.
This version of Oracle Real Application Clusters introduces a new service framework that allows administrators to configure, manage, and monitor application workloads as a service, deployed across a number of nodes, in a large-scale cluster deployment. This new framework allows administrators not only to monitor and manage performance levels for a given service but also to manage how to provide these services continuously.
This release offers a complete clusterware management solution as an integral component of Oracle Real Application Clusters, available on all platforms Oracle Database runs on. This clusterware functionality includes mechanisms for cluster connectivity, messaging and locking, cluster control and recovery, and a services provisioning framework. No third party clusterware management software is required, Oracle will, however, continue to support select third party clusterware products on specified platforms.
With this release, different application workloads can be defined as named services so that they can be individually managed and controlled. Database administrators can then control which processing resources are allocated to each service during both normal operations and in response to failures. CPU resource allocations and resource consumption controls can also be managed for named services using Resource Manager. Performance metrics are also tracked by service and thresholds can be set to automatically generate alerts should these thresholds be crossed. Oracle tools and facilities such as Job Scheduler, Parallel Query, and Oracle Streams Advanced Queuing also use services to manage their workloads.
Oracle Enterprise Manager has been significantly enhanced to enable true single system image management of cluster database deployments. Oracle Enterprise Manager's Cluster Database Page provides a single view of system status across multiple nodes. It also enables direct drill down to individual instances as and when needed.
In this release, Oracle Real Application Clusters enables fast, coordinated recovery between the database and application mid-tier components and products. Oracle Real Application Clusters 10g initially supports JDBC Implicit Connection Cache and Oracle Application Server 10g with this capability and will support additional mid-tier components and products in the future.
Several new optimizations in Oracle Real Application Clusters provide performance improvements for many applications. These include optimizations that reduce message traffic, memory usage and the consumption of other resources. In addition, dynamic file and cache affinity will aid performance when workloads are shifted between instances.
In this release, Oracle Real Application Clusters supports the application of patches to the nodes of a system in a rolling fashion, with no downtime. Patches can be applied one node at a time while the other nodes in the RAC system are up and operational. Patches will be labeled as being qualified for installation as rolling upgradeable, or not, depending on the changes being made by the patch.
This release introduces a new cluster configuration verification tool and improvements in the diagnostic tools first introduced in the Oracle9i Database release. Together these tools help users both avoid problems and resolve problems more quickly should they occur.
Oracle Database 10g is the database for Grid Computing. A great many of the new features in this release enable users to reduce costs, make more efficient use of resources, and more quickly align their resources to their changing business needs. This release includes features to enable virtualization and dynamic provisioning of resources, and to efficiently manage workloads in a Grid environment.
This release provides features to virtualize and dynamically provision on demand resources such as CPU, storage, and data. Resource virtualization and provisioning is the key to improving resource utilization and enabling the realignment of resources as business needs change.
Reduces costs of operating databases by improving resource utilization and eliminating the need for manually monitoring and allocating resources. Automatically re-provisions resources to meet changing business needs.
Automatically migrates sessions, including all state, from one instance to another, with no impact on end-users. Rebalances sessions across instances for load balancing, and in preparation for deprovisioning an instance.
In this release, the database can move any operating system file. This lets developers of applications move and copy data that is not stored in the database, helping applications keep data inside and outside the database consistent, and providing a mechanism to provision data external to the database in a Grid environment.
You can now create and maintain a replica of one or more tablespaces with a single command, simplifying the provisioning of a database in a Grid environment. Streams will automatically copy the data, ensure the replica is up to date, and optionally set up bi-directional replication.
In this release, Oracle Real Application Clusters offers a complete clusterware management solution as an integral component of Oracle Real Application Clusters, available on all platforms Oracle Database runs on. This clusterware functionality includes mechanisms for cluster connectivity, messaging and locking, cluster control and recovery, and a services provisioning framework. No third party clusterware management software is required, Oracle will, however, continue to support select third party clusterware products on specified platforms.
Oracle protocol support now includes support for the industry-standard Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP) for Infiniband high-speed networks. The SDP protocol is a high-speed communication protocol that speeds up performance of client/server and server/server connections. By using SDP, applications place most of the messaging burden upon the network interface card, freeing the CPU for other tasks.
In this release, Oracle Real Application Clusters enables fast, coordinated recovery between the database and application mid-tier components and products. Oracle Real Application Clusters initially supports JDBC Implicit Connection Cache and Oracle Application Server 10g with this capability and will support additional mid-tier components and products in the future.
Automatic Storage Management automates and simplifies the optimal layout of datafiles, control files, and log files. Database files are automatically distributed across all available disks, and database storage is rebalanced whenever the storage configuration changes. This feature also provides redundancy through the mirroring of database files.
The transportable tablespace feature now enables tablespaces to be transported across different platforms.
The Data Pump Export and Import utilities provide very high-speed bulk movement of data and metadata from database to another. These utilities offer several significant advantages over the original Export and Import utilities, including: the ability to completely restart export and import jobs; the ability to detach from and reattach to long-running jobs; the ability to estimate how much space an export job would consume; support for export and import operations over the network; and support for fine-grained object selection, based upon objects and objects types.
Streams replicas can now be instantiated by way of RMAN, providing faster instantiation of a Streams replica at a remote site or on another system in a Grid environment.
New features in this release automate workload management to improve utilization and efficiency. Workloads can be balanced across resources, and new scheduling capabilities distribute and manage workload across time.
With this release, different application workloads can be defined as named services so that they can be individually managed and controlled. DBAs can then control which processing resources are allocated to each service during both normal operations and in response to failures. CPU resource allocations and resource consumption controls can also be managed for named services using Resource Manager. Performance metrics are also tracked by service and thresholds can be set to automatically generate alerts should these thresholds be crossed. Oracle tools and facilities such as Job Scheduler, Parallel Query, and Oracle Streams Advanced Queuing also use services to manage their workloads.
This feature makes it easier to use Database Resource Manager without requiring any application changes.
The Scheduler enables job processing in a way that models your business requirements. It lets limited computing resources be allocated appropriately among competing jobs, thus aligning job processing with your business needs. In this release, you can group jobs that share common characteristics and behavior into larger entities called job classes. You can prioritize among the classes by controlling the resources allocated to each class. This ensures that your critical jobs have priority and have enough resources to complete. You can also prioritize jobs within a job class. The Scheduler lets you change the prioritization based on a schedule. Because the definition of a critical job can change across time, the Scheduler lets you change the prioritization among your jobs over time.
This release provides a great many new features that will help you integrate your information within a department, enterprise, or within a Grid environment. New features provided improved performance in heterogeneous environments. There are also numerous improvements to Oracle Streams, many which help improve both performance and manageability. Lastly, a new database scheduler provides a mechanism to automate integration activities, and improve resource utilization over time.
This release provides improved performance for integrating information in heterogeneous environments. A new feature enables reference to remote stored procedures, enabling sophisticated processing in the most efficient manner.
In SELECT statements, you can now refer to remote functions stored in a non-Oracle database. This allows for more efficient local processing of non-Oracle data, reducing the amount of data that must be processed by the gateway.
See Oracle Database Heterogeneous Connectivity Administrator's Guide for more details.
This release provides functionality, performance, and management improvements for Oracle Streams. New functionality includes downstream capture, which offloads the capture and mining operations from the production database. Oracle Streams has also been expanded to support LONG, LONG RAW, and NCLOB datatypes, index-organized tables, and row subsetting during capture and propagation, expanding the range of applications Streams can be used with. Support for negative rules makes it easier to specify complex subscriptions. Other manageability improvements include better monitoring, additional views, improved diagnostics, and better error handling and cleanup operations. Performance has also been tuned to improve most operations. Oracle Streams also offers two new options for instantiation, using RMAN and transportable tablespaces. Finally, this release extends support for the Messaging Gateway (MGW).
This feature provides a J2EE-compatible JMS provider regardless of your choice of Oracle JDBC drivers. You can now use the JDBC thin driver.
OJMS (AQ/JMS) now supports Domain Unification as it is specified in the JMS 1.1 Specification. Within one transacted session, both the point-to-point and pub-sub domains are supported. As a result, OJMS applications can now send a message to a queue and receive a message from a topic within one transacted session. OJMS also now supports Streams AQ batch enqueue and dequeue.
This feature supports integration of Advanced Queuing with the MQSeries JMS interface.
This feature supports integration with the Advanced Queuing OJMS interface.
This feature supports integration of Advanced Queuing with the Tibco/Rv messaging system through its Java interface.
You can now enqueue or dequeue an array of messages to a single queue. The messages all share the same enqueue or dequeue options, but each message in the array can have different message properties.
This tool enables you to migrate easily from Advanced Replication to Streams.
Streams now replicates tables with ON DELETE CASCADE constraints.
It is no longer necessary to write an apply handler that implicitly dequeues a logical change record (LCR) from the buffered queue and then explicitly enqueues the LCR into the persistent queue. A new name-value pair for the action context of an apply rule lets you specify the queue into which to move an LCR. You can optionally apply the LCR as it is reenqueued.
You can use new functions to get name and type information about the Streams client processing an LCR, useful for writing more intelligent rules, transformations, apply handlers and error handlers.
You can now use Streams with descending and function-based indexes.
You can use a new type of apply handler called a precommit handler to record information about commits processed by an apply process.
You can now write rules which, if true, will cause the subscription to be false, simplifying the creation of sophisticated rules.
A new function in the DBMS_STREAMS_ADM package makes it easier to set the transformation function name for a rule.
Streams can now automatically subset rows between subset databases without having to send unnecessary data to destination databases.
You can now use Oracle Streams to capture and apply changes to index-organized tables (IOTs) and to LONG and NCLOB datatypes.
You now have access to additional LCR attributes, row_id, serial#, session#, thread#, tx_name, and username, for use in your custom procedures, transformations, and rule conditions.
Streams replicas can now be instantiated through data pump, providing faster instantiation of a Streams replica at a remote site or on another system in a Grid environment.
Some Streams packaged procedures have been enhanced to let you remove unnecessary rule sets, preventing performance degradation and confusion.
Streams provides new views to monitor statistics on a Streams buffered queue.
You can now easily configure email, http, and PL/SQL message notifications for a Streams messaging client. Notifications eliminate the need for clients to block or poll for new messages.
You can now allocate memory from the new Streams pool, giving database administrators more control over memory usage by Streams.
Streams now includes a simplified API for enqueue and dequeue operations into and from an AnyData queue.
A new data dictionary view makes it easier to monitor transformation functions.
Streams now writes warnings during some error conditions instead of stopping the capture and apply.
Streams replicas can now be instantiated by way of RMAN, providing faster instantiation of a Streams replica at a remote site or on another system in a Grid environment.
You can now implement record keeping and order transactions when LCRs are applied by external applications rather than by the Streams apply process.
A new DBMS_CAPTURE procedure enables you to remove old LogMiner information. This cleanup capability can prevent performance degradation and improve manageability by eliminating clutter.
Streams packaged procedures have been enhanced to set the instantiation system change number (SCN) for all table objects owned by a schema, eliminating the need to set the instantiation SCN for each object individually.
New data dictionary views make it easier for you to ensure that Streams is operating and to discover and resolve any issues that may arise.
You can now grant privileges through an API, which makes it easier in a Streams environment to grant only those privileges that are necessary.
When used in an Oracle Real Application Clusters environment, Streams now supports hot mining and can automatically restart processes after failover.
Streams can now perform capture from log files on a system other than the source database. This can reduce the overhead on the source system and provide better disaster protection. In a data warehousing environment, it eliminates the need to access the production OLTP system.
Streams replicas can now be instantiated through transportable tablespaces, providing faster instantiation of a Streams replica at a remote site or on another system in a Grid environment.
C++ developers can now use the OCCI API to enqueue and dequeue to and from Streams and AnyData queues.
Streams change capture and apply processes have been improved to handle greater workloads.
Streams AnyData queue operations, rules evaluation, and propagation have been improved to handle greater workloads.
This feature reduces the time you need to spend creating and managing rules used by Streams and other applications. Additional views and statistics are provided for tuning purposes.
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See Also: Oracle Streams Replication Administrator's Guide for information on migration from Advanced Replication to Streams, supplemental logging, and the following instantiation enhancements: RMAN, SCN at the apply site, and transportable tablespaces Oracle Streams Concepts and Administration for information on the enqueue handler, rules enhancements, negative rules, the rules engine, row migration, monitoring enhancements for transformations, downstream capture, and new APIs for granting privileges PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference for information on message queuing and LogMiner information |
This release includes a new database scheduler to provide enterprise scheduling functionality. The Scheduler gives administrators the ability to schedule a job to run at a particular date and time. It also provides the ability to create libraries of the Scheduler objects, thus allowing existing objects to be shared by other users. It also enables scarce computing resources to be allocated appropriately among competing jobs, thus aligning job processing with the service-level needs of the business. Jobs that share common characteristics and behavior can be grouped into larger entities, called job classes, which can be prioritized by controlling the system resources allocated to each. For finer control, the prioritization among the job classes can also be based on a schedule.
The Scheduler integrates many job scheduling capabilities, such as time-based job execution, in one tool. It supports PL/SQL stored procedures and anonymous blocks, C functions, and Java stored procedures by way of callouts and operating system scripts. It also supports distributed database scheduling.
The Scheduler has been designed to be easy to use. It supports user-defined object names, has easy time specification syntax, and has defaults for all the API arguments. Schedules are validated, and both jobs and schedules can be saved in a library for reuse.
A job undergoes multiple states from its creation to its completion. All Scheduler activity is logged, and you can easily track information such as the status of the job and the time to completion of the job. This information is stored in views and can be easily queried using Oracle Enterprise Manager or a SQL query.
The Scheduler enables job processing in a way that models your business requirements. It lets limited computing resources be allocated appropriately among competing jobs, thus aligning job processing with your business needs. In Oracle Database, you can group jobs that share common characteristics and behavior into larger entities called job classes. You can prioritize among the classes by controlling the resources allocated to each class. This ensures that your critical jobs have priority and have enough resources to complete. You can also prioritize jobs within a job class. The Scheduler lets you change the prioritization based on a schedule. Because the definition of a critical job can change across time, the Scheduler lets you change the prioritization among your jobs over time.
The Scheduler recovers back to a transactionally consistent state from a system or slave process crash. Jobs and windows that would have started had the system not crashed will be started automatically, so no manual intervention is required.
The Scheduler fully supports execution of jobs in a clustered or Grid environment. To balance the load on your system and for better performance, you can also specify the service where you want a job to run.
This feature improves the performance of jobs involving PL/SQL stored procedures, Java stored procedures, and C functions by skipping the parse phase.
Improved job coordinator algorithms have increased the number of Scheduler jobs that can be executed per hour.
Availability of data is a major requirement for organizations wishing to deliver world-class data management capabilities. With this release, Oracle extends the ability of the database to deal with any type of human error, and also provides support for reducing the time it takes to implement database and application upgrades.
In line with the management improvements in other areas, this release also greatly simplifies the management of backup and recovery in an Oracle environment. New in this release is a disk-based recovery area that can be used as an online disk cache for backup and recovery operations for one or more Oracle databases. Backups themselves can be scheduled to happen automatically, and automated backup tuning, in conjunction with fast incremental backups, ensures that backups complete within the window provided for these operations. In recovery scenarios, the relevant database is also able to identify the correct backup to use for restore operations, preventing the administrator from mistakenly using the wrong backup. A new offline synthetic recovery is also supported, ensuring that an up-to-date image is always available for fast media restore and recovery.
This release supports automated, disk-based backup and recovery. The benefits include simplified and unified storage location for backups, archive logs, and any other files needed for Oracle recovery; automatic deletion of the files after they have been successfully backed up by the Recovery Manager (RMAN); the equivalent of a disk cache for tape, which reduces the time needed to restore a file from tape; and reduced risk of an out-of-space condition on disk, by deleting files that are no longer required for database recovery.
The new DROP DATABASE command deletes all database files, all online logs, control files, and server parameter files (spfiles).
The new UNREGISTER DATABASE RMAN command removes all metadata for one database from the recovery catalog.
This feature enables you to quickly restore the standby control file in case of media recovery, providing Oracle-managed files and automatic storage management support for standby databases.
This feature automatically creates the auxiliary instance needed to perform tablespace point-in-time recovery (TSPITR) and incorporate the RMAN TSPITR operations.
You can now catalog RMAN proprietary backup metadata into a backup repository. If a backup is overwritten in the control file or a backup file is moved to a new location on disk, then you can easily uncatalog the backup metadata from the repository.
Recovery Manager (RMAN) now automatically retries a failed backup or restore operation, reducing the risk of leaving you with no backup of the database because of an error.
This feature enhances RMAN recovery by automatically creating and recovering datafiles that have never been backed up.
Image backups provide fast recovery by being readily usable. The Recovery Manager (RMAN) BACKUP command has been enhanced to perform image copy backups at the database, tablespace, and datafile level.
You can now back up archive logs by way of the Recovery Manager (RMAN) Proxy Copy.
You can now apply a Recovery Manager (RMAN) incremental backup to a datafile image backup. This results in reduced recovery time, because fewer logs need to be applied, and reduced time to back up the database, because you do not always have to back up the whole database.
You no longer have to back up your database following an incomplete recovery and OPEN RESETLOGS operations.
When the latest backup is not available, Recovery Manager (RMAN) now automatically uses an older backup for restore operations.
It is no longer necessary to issue a separate command to place each tablespace in hot backup mode. You can now use the ALTER DATABASE statement to place all tablespaces in backup mode. Also, the BEGIN BACKUP command now runs faster than before.
By using a new type of log file to track blocks that have changed in the database, Recovery Manager (RMAN) can avoid scanning the entire datafile during an incremental backup. Instead, the amount of data scanned is proportional to the amount of data changed.
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See Also: Oracle Database SQL Reference for information on the Oracle Database Backup and Recovery Basics for information on automated disk-based backup and recovery Oracle Database Administrator's Guide for information on dropping a database and on simplified recovery through resetlogs Oracle Data Guard Concepts and Administration for information on automated disk-based backup and recovery and on simplified recovery of resetlogs Oracle Database Concepts for more information about flash forward and an overview of backup and recovery features |
The Oracle Data Guard infrastructure introduced to support standby databases has been improved. Support for log mining of additional datatypes is provided, as well as hot log mining capabilities, allowing Oracle Data Guard to be used with a wider variety of existing legacy applications. A new real-time standby apply capability is provided, which ensures that the standby database is in close synchronization with the production system. Zero downtime instantiation and easier zero data loss operations are also supported for standby databases using SQL Apply. Management of an Oracle Data Guard environment has also been improved in this release, with support for more fine-grained supplemental logging at the database, schema, and table level, and improved monitoring capabilities. Performance and security of data transmission have also been improved.
See Oracle Data Guard Concepts and Administration for information on all Data Guard enhancements.
You can now configure and support Real Application Clusters instances in a Data Guard configuration using Data Guard Broker interfaces, both the GUI and the command line.
For users who conduct LogMiner mining in the same database that generated redo logs, LogMiner can scan the control file itself and determine the redo logs that satisfy a requested time or SCN range. Through this feature, LogMiner by default adds redo logs from the mining database.
LogMiner support for index-organized tables increases transaction recovery options for DBAs using LogMiner and makes logical standby more complete.
LogMiner and SQL Apply now support multibyte CLOB and NCLOB data. SQL Apply now also supports LONG data. Support of additional datatypes means that you can now mine a greater variety of data.
This feature adds a new set of data definition language (DDL) statements that enable you to add or drop supplemental logging at the database, schema, and table levels.
This feature increases the security of a Data Guard environment by preventing possible tampering of redo data as it is being transferred to the standby database.
With DB_UNIQUE_NAME, it is now possible to dynamically add a standby database to a Data Guard configuration that contains a Real Applications Clusters primary database, when that primary database is operating in either the maximum protection or maximum availability protection modes, without shutting down the primary database. DB_UNIQUE_NAME also enhances the usability aspects of a Data Guard configuration.
SQL Apply now supports standby redo logs (SRLs) that enable complete zero-data-loss support for logical standby databases.
Shutdown or quiesce of the primary database is no longer required when you create a logical standby database from a primary database.
The managed recovery process (MRP) can now recover redo from standby online redo logs as the logs are being filled, without requiring them to be archived at the standby database, resulting in faster recovery, switchover, and failover times.
Data Guard supports the new in this release recovery through resetlogs feature that simplifies recovery with backups taken from an earlier incarnation so that it is as easy as recovering a backup from the same incarnation. Hence, database administrators no longer need to make new backups of a database after a RESETLOGS operation. Data Guard supports the recovery through resetlogs feature by automating operations on a standby database when an ALTER DATABASE OPEN RESETLOGS statement is being performed on a corresponding primary database. By providing this automation, Data Guard eliminates the possibility of user error in the event the standby database has not applied beyond the primary database OPEN RESETLOGS point-in-time.
See Oracle Database Utilities and PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference for information on LogMiner configuration and Oracle Database Utilities for information on LogMiner support for index-organized tables and for additional datatypes.
In this release, Oracle introduces expanded database Flashback capabilities. If a major error occurs, such as a batch job being run twice in succession, the database administrator can request a Flashback operation that quickly recovers the entire database to a previous point in time, eliminating the need to restore backups and do a point-in-time recovery. In addition to Flashback operations at the database level, it is also possible to flash back an entire table in this release of the Oracle Database. Similarly, a new capability allows the database to recover tables that have been inadvertently dropped by a user. The existing Oracle Flashback Query capabilities have also been improved.
This feature introduces the FLASHBACK DATABASE statement in SQL. It let you quickly bring your database to a prior point in time by undoing all the changes that have taken place since that time. This operation is fast, because you do not need to restore the backups. This in turn results in much less downtime following data corruption or human error.
This feature introduces the FLASHBACK TABLE statement in SQL, which enables you to quickly recover a table to a point in time in the past without restoring a backup.
Using undo data stored in the database, you can now view the changes to one or more rows along with all the metadata of the changes.
This feature introduces Oracle Flashback Transaction Query, which enables you to examine changes to the database at the transaction level. As a result, you can diagnose problems, perform analysis, and audit transactions.
See Oracle Database SQL Reference for information on the FLASHBACK DATABASE, FLASHBACK TABLE, and UNDROP statements and on flashback queries and Oracle Database Backup and Recovery Advanced User's Guide for information on FLASHBACK DATABASE.
This release further reduces the downtime associated with application and database upgrades by supporting rolling window upgrades of hardware, operating system, or database versions. This is achieved by using standby databases, with new support allowing an organization to switch between different versions of standby and production databases. Different patch releases of database software running in an Oracle Real Application Clusters environment are also supported. For database changes and application upgrades, the current online redefinition capabilities have been expanded to support one-step cloning of all the associated database objects. In addition, changes to the underlying objects no longer invalidate the PL/SQL packages built on these objects, allowing new redefinition operations to be performed without the need to recompile the corresponding stored procedures.
See Oracle High Availability Architecture and Best Practices for general information on application and database upgrades.
This feature increases application availability by minimizing downtime, such as the downtime for application upgrades.
In a future patchset release of this release, it will be possible to do a rolling upgrade using logical standby databases. The foundation for rolling upgrades is now implemented into the SQL apply technology so that the primary database incurs minimal downtime when you upgrade the Oracle Database software on each database in the Data Guard configuration. For example, using SQL apply and logical standby databases, you will be able to upgrade the oracle database software from patchset release 10.1.0.n to the next database 10.1.0.(n+1) patchset release. See the README file for the applicable patchset release.
When a PL/SQL subprogram or a view references a table using a synonym, then repointing the synonym to a table with the same signature and grants no longer invalidates its dependents. Thus, the need for time-consuming recompilation is avoided.
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See Also: PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference for information on online redefinition using the Oracle Database Administrator's Guide for information on online redefinition enhancements Oracle Data Guard Concepts and Administration for information on rolling upgrades with Data Guard SQL Apply |
Security improvements in this release focus on improved administration of large numbers of users across an integrated end-to-end environment, and support for key security technologies.
Administration enhancements lower the costs associated with development, installation, deployment configuration, and management of security for realistic applications. Security procedures are simplified so that complexity is not the primary barrier to secure operational deployments.
SQL support of fine-grained auditing (FGA) has been enhanced to support granular auditing of queries as well as UPDATE, INSERT, and DELETE operations.
This feature provides an alternate secure channel for communication between Oracle Internet Directory (OID) and the database or between two databases. If your enterprise deploys password-authenticated users, then you no longer have to invest in and administer public key infrastructure (PKI). Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) communication provides an equally secure channel.
A single sign on user defined in the directory can now use the features offered by Enterprise User Security. No additional administration tasks are required for provisioning and credential management. In addition, the administrative groups for Enterprise User Security can now designate an owner, which facilitates stronger security overall.
This feature eliminates the need for the RDBMS_SERVER_DN parameter, making configuration of enterprise users easier.
This feature improves security administration by providing a uniform audit trail for RDBMS auditing in the form of standard and fine-grained audit tables. Transactions and SQL information have been added to the audit tables to further improve accountability of all users.
Database integration with the Oracle Internet Directory has been enhanced, with support added for directory management of Oracle Label Security policies, and Certificate Revocation Lists (CRLs). The Oracle Internet Directory can also be used to store the passwords as SASL 'secrets'. In addition, this release provides full support for Kerberos based security frameworks, supporting both Kerberos based user authentication, and database-to-database communications based on Kerberos credentials. Fine grained auditing, has been expanded to apply not only to query operations to but DML operations as well, providing better accountability of all user operations.
Certificate validation is an important element of enabling public key infrastructure (PKI) in an enterprise. If you use SSL in an Oracle Database environment, you can now validate the certificates presented by servers and clients for authentication.
This feature reduces administrative costs by enabling certificate revocation lists (CRLs) to be centrally stored in the Oracle Internet Directory as an alternative to local CRL stores.
Enterprise users can be authenticated using their Kerberos credentials. This feature extends the support for Kerberos users from external users to global users and enables users to be mapped to an exclusive or shared schema.
You can now enable Kerberos-based authentication across current-user and connected-user database links.
This feature supports interoperability with commercially available key distribution center (KDC) vendors. For example, customers on Microsoft Windows platforms (including Windows 2000 and Windows XP) using Kerberos as the security infrastructure can now integrate with an Oracle environment with the same Kerberos credentials, achieving secure single sign on.
Java applications, including those running within OC4J, can now access the single sign on wallet through the key store interface without user input or programmatically provided password.
J2EE applications that must run over SSL can now use standard key store interfaces provided in the Java Development Kit to open Oracle Wallets.
This feature lets an application use Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard Digest-MD5 verifiers for authentication of users and of the application itself, providing easier integration of users into the Oracle environment.
Oracle Database users and Oracle iAS users managed in the directory now use the same attribute in the directory for authentication. This feature provides the same level of security for safeguarding passwords (verifiers) as is available for public key infrastructure (PKI) credentials.
Oracle SSL users can now store their private key material on smart cards. This feature provides complete machine independence for performing SSL-based transactions.
