5
Oracle9i Database Feature and Option Availability

Oracle9i Real Application Clusters

N

Y

N

Oracle9i Real Application Clusters is a computing environment that harnesses the processing power of multiple, interconnected computers using clustering technology. It includes Cluster File System capability on the Windows environment.

Oracle Partitioning

N

Y

Y

Oracle Partitioning allows large tables to be broken into smaller pieces that improve manageability, availability, and scalability.

On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP)

N

Y

Y

Oracle9i OLAP is a scalable, high-performance calculation engine with fulling integrated management and administration for delivering analytic applications.

Data Mining

N

Y

Y

Data Mining provides personalization capabilities to enable customers to implement accurate realtime recommendations and personalization capabilities into their online operations.

Oracle Label Security

N

Y

Y

Oracle Label Security extends Virtual Private Database functionality by offering label-based data access.

Oracle Advanced Security

N

Y

Y

Oracle Advanced Security provides a comprehensive range of network security features to provide a single source of integration with network encryption, single sign-on services, smartcard, token, and biometric user authentication, with support for Enterprise User Management.

Oracle Programmer

Y

Y

Y

Oracle Programmer is a family of products consisting of three SQL-style interfaces: precompilers, SQL*Module, and SQLJ; three call level interfaces: Oracle Call Interface (OCI), ODBC, and JDBC; Oracle Objects for OLE; and Object Type Translator and JPub.

Oracle Spatial

N

Y

Y

The Oracle Spatial option is an integrated set of functions and procedures that enables spatial data to be stored, accessed, and analyzed quickly and efficiently in an Oracle database.

Oracle Tuning Pack for use with Oracle Enterprise Manager

N

Y

Y

Oracle Tuning Pack provides database administrators with expert performance management for the Oracle environment, including SQL tuning and storage optimization.

Oracle Diagnostics Pack for use with Oracle Enterprise Manager

N

Y

Y

Oracle Diagnostics Pack is an advanced set of tools used to monitor the state of databases and systems and pinpoint, analyze, and repair any weaknesses.

Oracle Change Management Pack for use with Oracle Enterprise Manager

N

Y

Y

Oracle Change Management Pack eliminates errors and loss of data when upgrading databases to support new applications. The pack analyzes the impact and complex dependencies associated with application change and automatically performs database upgrades.

Oracle Management Pack for Oracle Applications for use with Oracle Enterprise Manager

N

Y

Y

Oracle Management Pack for Oracle Applications extends Oracle Enterprise Manager to enable the monitoring, diagnosis, capacity planning, and tuning of the Oracle Applications environment.

Oracle Management Pack for SAP R/3 for use with Oracle Enterprise Manager

N

Y

Y

Oracle Management Pack for SAP R/3 offers real time monitoring for SAP R/3 systems, capacity planning for historical analysis and future planning purposes, event integration, and a single point of administration of the host, database, and application.

Performance and Scalability

Cluster File System

N

Y

Y

Available only with the Real Application Clusters option for Windows, this feature improves disk manageability.

Performance and Scalability

Real Application Clusters Guard II

N

Y

Y

Available only with the Real Application Clusters option, this new implementation of Real Application Clusters Guard supports active/active high availability configurations with easy-to-configure failover policies based on named services.

Performance and Scalability

Itanium 2 on HP-UX and Linux.

Y

Y

N

Itanium 2 is supported on HP-UX and Linux for use with the Oracle9i release 2 database.

Availability

Data Guard Redo Apply and Data Guard SQL Apply

N

Y

Y

Provides standby databases for your production database; the production database must be in Oracle9iEnterprise Edition.

Availability

Data Guard enhancements

N

Y

Y

Improves availability and includes Data Guard Broker enhancements for switchover, support for multiple standby databases, and enforceable restrictions on unlogged operations on a primary database that would impact its Standby databases.

Availability

LogMiner improvements

Y

Y

Y

Provides support for Large Objects (LOBs), LONGs, and parallel DML, as well as a multi-versioned dictionary and real time mining of online logs.

Availability

Rename column and constraint

Y

Y

Y

Provides users with the ability to rename CONSTRAINTS and COLUMNS.

Availability

Fast PL/SQL recompilation

Y

Y

Y

Provides fast loading of wrapped source, knows to do nothing upon loading an unchanged package, view or synonym, and removes double invalidations and parallel compilation in dep, significantly reducing the time required for PL/SQL packages and procedures recompilation.

Availability

Flashback query improvements

Y

Y

Y

Generates flashback information within a SQL statement instead of only within a session.

Information Sharing

Oracle Streams

N

Y

N

Shares information between users, applications, and databases to enable data replication, message queuing, event management, and data warehouse loading.

Manageability

Locally managed System Tablespace

Y

Y

Y

Enables the SYSTEM tablespace to be Locally Managed to simplify the database administrator's tasks.

Manageability

Archive log space management

Y

Y

Y

Included in Recovery Manager, this feature automates the space management of archived log files, freeing the database administrator from managing the space allocation of the archived logs.

Manageability

Built-in shared pool usage and SQL execution advisories

Y

Y

Y

This feature includes built-in advisories that do the following:

• Show Shared Pool usage for improving parse time and minimizing CPU usage.
• Show SQL execution memory for improvements in SQL execution time, and for minimizing unnecessary CPU and I/O use.

Manageability

Built-in Mean-Time-To-Recover advisory

N

Y

Y

Enables the administrator to set time requirements to recover from a system malfunction without jeopardizing run-time performance.

Manageability

Query execution statistics

Y

Y

N

Provides actual operation-level query execution statistics (instead of estimated ones) to help identify the most expensive SQL statements and their corresponding operations.

Manageability

Access statistics

Y

Y

N

Specifies areas of high contention in objects by identifying tables, partitions, and indexes that are heavily accessed or have contention points.

Manageability

I/O topology

Y

Y

N

Useful in all systems, this feature provides complete mapping of a file to logical volumes and physical devices.

Manageability

Clone management in Oracle Enterprise Manager

N

Y

Y

Included in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Change Management Pack, this feature enables you to clone a subset of a production environment (data and statistics) for development testing.

Application Development

XML DB

Y

Y

N

XML support in both Native XML storage and retrieval technology is available to absorb fully the W3C XML data model into the Oracle9idatabase, to provide new standard access methods for navigating and querying XML, and to provide an XML repository.

Application Development

XDK Improvements

Y

Y

N

XDKs have improved performance, including conformance with the latest XML standards including XML Schema and SOAP, and new compression and diff features.

Application Development

Server side debugging

Y

Y

N

JSWP compliant debugging of Java and PL/SQL in the database allows debugging from any JDB compliant tool, such as JDeveloper (IASV2).

Application Development

Globalization enhancements

Y

Y

N

Globalization provides support to the 44,946 newly added, supplementary characters in the latest edition (3.1) of the Unicode standard to remove the NCHAR adoption obstacle for customers who are dependent on Objects.

Application Development

Java improvements

Y

Y

N

The Oracle9iDatabase now has JDBC support for TIMESTAMP datatype and statement pooling. It provides thin JDBC support for PL/SQL index tables, NUMBER conversions routines, and optimized statement execution time and has implemented all Java methods.

Application Development

PL/SQL improvements

Y

Y

N

PL/SQL Associative Arrays replace a large volume of sort/search code for performance improvements. Collection/Record Performance improvements provide faster string operations under UTF8. Insert/Update can now be performed using a whole record.

Application Development

C, C++ improvements

Y

Y

N

Provides a scrollable cursor and efficient shared server application connection pooling.

Application Development

iSQL*Plus

Y

Y

N

iSQL*Plus can run most existing SQL*Plus scripts and can be used to create dynamic reports from a web based browser.

Content Management

interMedia improvements

Y

Y

N

Provides new formats supported by interMedia AVI as well as improved image processing performance.

Content Management

Build spatial indexes in parallel

N

Y

N

Supported in Locator and with the Oracle Spatial option, this feature builds R-tree and quadtree indexes in parallel.

Content Management

Text improvements

Y

Y

N

Improvements to Oracle Text enhance its manageability and scalability, and new features support XML searching.

Content Management

Improvements to Locator and Oracle Spatial Option

Y

Y

N

Included in the Oracle Spatial option, this feature provides spatial performance improvements for R-tree indexes and queries using secondary filters.

Content Management

Workspace manager improvements

Y

Y

N

Enhancements to Workspace help database administrators better to manage production workspaces and to allow workspaces to be used by hundreds or thousands of users to group, to isolate, and to version long duration updates to relational data.

Business Intelligence

Composite range-list partitioning

N

Y

Y

Included with the Partitioning option, RANGE-LIST partitioning is a composite partitioning technique, in which a table is partitioned using RANGE and then sub-partitioned using LIST.

Business Intelligence

Partitioning improvements

N

Y

Y

Subpartition Templates and Fast partition SPLIT are included in the Partitioning Option.

Business Intelligence

Enhanced Optimizer Statistics

Y

Y

Y

Dynamic sampling of optimizer statistics and DBMS_STATS is enhanced to support user-defined statistics.

Business Intelligence

Parallel DML on non-partitioned tables

N

Y

Y

Update and delete statements against non-partitioned tables can be parallelized.

Business Intelligence

Materialized view improvements

N

Y

Y

Provides Full and Fast Refresh of Nested Materialized Views, Fast Refresh with UNION ALL in materialized views, Text Match Rewrite which ignores alphabetic case and supports set operators, and Text Match Rewrite with Named View Defining Text.

Business Intelligence

OLAP Option Enhancements

N

Y

Y

Provides OCI and JDBC interfaces to OLAP option, extended warehouse schema support, dynamic model execution, SQL INSERT DIRECT OLAP DML command, SQL IMPORT command in OLAP DML command, ALLOCATION system, OLAP Catalog Metadata API, and RDBMS storage of analytic workspace.

Business Intelligence

Data Compression

N

Y

Y

Provides the capability to create tablespaces, tables, and partitions with COMPRESS characteristics as they are loaded into segments.

Business Intelligence

Data Mining Enhancements

N

Y

Y

Included with the Data Mining option, these features include two new algorithms, decision trees using adaptive Bayesian networks and clustering, and attribute importance and model seeker utilities.

Security and Directory

Inverse group support

N

Y

Y

Included with the Oracle Label Security option, inverse groups indicate releasability of information and are used to mark the dissemination of data.

Security and Directory

VPD Enhancements

N

Y

Y

Applies VPD policies to public or private synonyms associated with table or view base objects. Allows creation of VPD argument of object name to be a table, view, or synonym.

Security and Directory

DBA grant, revoke

Y

Y

Y

New system privilege, GRANT ANY OBJECT PRIVILEGE, allows users to grant and revoke privileges on objects on behalf of the object's owner to simplify the installation process.

Security and Directory

Username and password are set up upon database creation

Y

Y

Y

Improves Oracle relational database management system security.

Security and Directory

DBA auditing

Y

Y

Y

Improves Oracle relational database management system security.

Security and Directory

ASO enhancements

N

Y

Y

Included with the Oracle Advanced Security option, these improvements include SSL integration with hardware accelerators and a user migration utility, and use the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption algorithm.

Windows Integration

Oracle Fail Safe improvements

Y

Y

Y

Allow additional support for a logical standby database or a physical standby database and allow multi-cluster manageability.

Windows Integration

OLE DB .NET, ODBC .NET, and ODP.NET support

Y

Y

Y

The Oracle9iDatabase Release 2 client fully supports ODBC .NET, OLE DB .NET, and ODP.NET data access to any Oracle database.

Windows Integration

VLM support

Y

Y

Y

Improves performance and scalability of Oracle on Windows by allowing access to large physical memory areas.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Automated parallel query degree

N

Y

Y

Provides automated parallel query optimization based on system utilization.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Bitmap indexes

N

Y

Y

Provides an index type commonly used in a data warehouse for columns with small number of distinct values, such as 'Y' or 'to improve dramatically performance gains in a data warehouse application.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

CUBE and ROLLUP

Y

Y

Y

OLAP operators CUBE and ROLLUP to produce sub-totals and crosstab reports easily and efficiently using a single SQL statement.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Analytic functions

Y

Y

Y

Includes rank, moving average, and ratio-to-report.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Descending indexes

Y

Y

Y

Provides better performance when indexed data needs to sorted in descending order.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Direct Path Load API

Y

Y

Y

Allows complete access to all load functionality through OCI API for creation of high performance load programs.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Export transportable tablespaces

N

Y

Y

Quickly moves or creates a copy of tablespace data. A transportable tablespace can be "plugged in" to all editions of the Oracle9idatabase, but only Enterprise Edition can create a transportable tablespace.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Function-based indexes

N

Y

Y

Allows indexes to be created on expressions or functions.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Import transportable tablespaces

Y

Y

Y

Quickly "plugs in" a transportable tablespace. Oracle9iEnterprise Edition must be used to create (export) a transportable tablespace.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Long operations monitor

Y

Y

Y

Progress of long running database and application operations can be monitored, and information can be displayed, such as percent complete.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Materialized views

N

Y

Y

Includes summary management functionality, join indexes, and summary advisor. Provides powerful functionality that automatically redirects queries to stored summary tables, improving query performance dramatically.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Optimizer statistics management

Y

Y

Y

Enables schema object statistics, used by the cost based optimizer, to be copied and moved to another database.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Parallel analyze

N

Y

Y

The ANALYZE statement, used to gather statistics on tables, can be run using parallel processing. This feature requires the Partitioning Option.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Parallel bitmap star query optimization

N

Y

Y

This algorithm utilizes single-table bitmap indexes and an advanced star query join method, resulting in excellent performance while efficiently utilizing space.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Parallel DML (insert/update/ delete)

N

Y

Y

DML operations are transparently divided across multiple processes. This feature requires the Partitioning Option.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Parallel index build

N

Y

Y

Indexes can be created using parallel processes, significantly improving performance of the operation.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Parallel index scans

N

Y

Y

Queries that use of an index can scan the index in parallel with multiple processes. This requires the Partitioning Option.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Parallel load

Y

Y

Y

Fast load of data is accomplished by use of multiple, parallel processes.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Parallel query

N

Y

Y

Oracle9i transparently distributes query execution across multiple processes, resulting in excellent performance.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Sample scan

N

Y

Y

The SAMPLE keyword is used to in SQL statements to select a percentage of random data easily within a table; this is useful in data mining applications.

Data Warehousing and VLDB

Star query optimization

Y

Y

Y

This algorithm utilizes B-tree indexes (not bitmap indexes).

Database Features

Advanced Queuing

N

Y

Y

This rules-based, publish and subscribe queuing system can be used to develop large-scale, message-oriented distributed applications.

Database Features

Database event triggers

Y

Y

Y

Database triggers, such as database startup or shutdown triggers, DDL statement triggers, and logon/logoff triggers, are fired when the event occurs.

Database Features

DBMS_REPAIR package

Y

Y

Y

Provides early detection and correction of software and hardware corruption.

Database Features

Drop column

Y

Y

Y

Provides functionality to remove an unwanted column from a table.

Database Features

Fine-grained access control

N

Y

Y

Includes functionality to create security policies that implement row-level security.

Database Features

Index coalesce

N

Y

Y

Free space in index leaf blocks can be defragmented while table is online.

Database Features

Index-organized tables

Y

Y

Y

Provides tables where data is stored in a B*-tree index structure for better performance and reduced storage.

Database Features

Indexes on Globalization Support collating sequences

N

Y

Y

Provides efficient linguistic sorting using Globalization Support sorts through use of function-based indexes (available in Enterprise Edition and Personal Oracle9i).

Database Features

Instead-of triggers

Y

Y

Y

Provides triggers that execute instead of the DML transaction execution.

Database Features

LOB (large object) support

Y

Y

Y

Provides datatypes and functionality for storing and manipulating large objects, such as images or other unstructured data.

Database Features

Locally managed tablespaces

Y

Y

Y

Provides efficient storage management functionality that improves reliability and reduces fragmentation.

Database Features

LogMiner

Y

Y

Y

Provides the functionality to analyze transaction log information online to enable auditing of transactions and the ability to "back out" individual transactions.

Database Features

Globalization Support

Y

Y

Y

Provides native language support.

Database Features

Objects and extensibility

Y

Y

Y

Object relational functionality includes object types and methods. Also provides database extensibility by means of APIs to database services and functionality.

Database Features

Online index build

N

Y

Y

Indexes can be built and re-built without locking the table during the operation.

Database Features

Password management

Y

Y

Y

Provides password expiration, complexity, and security policy management.

Database Features

PL/SQL stored procedures, triggers

Y

Y

Y

Provides mechanism to deploy logic directly in the database.

Database Features

PL/SQL Server Pages

Y

Y

Y

Provides server-side Web pages (in HTML or XML) with embedded PL/SQL scripts, enabling rapid development of dynamic Web pages.

Database Features

Plan Stability

N

Y

Y

Allows execution plans for SQL to be stored so that the plan remains consistent throughout schema changes, database reorganizations, and data volume changes.

Database Features

Reverse key indexes

Y

Y

Y

Indexed columns can be indexed on reversed column values for better index performance.

Database Features

Temporary tables

Y

Y

Y

Allows users to manipulate data for the duration of a transaction or session.

Distributed

Advanced Replication

N

Y

Y

Advanced replication includes basic replication functionality plus multi-master replication, Replication Manager, and parallel propagation to maximize throughput. (Advanced Replication was formerly known as Replication.)

Distributed

Basic replication

Y

Y

Y

Oracle9iserver fully supports bi-directional replication with automated conflict detection and resolution. Supported configurations include a single updatable master site with multiple updatable or read-only snapshot sites.

Distributed

Distributed queries

Y

Y

Y

Queries can include tables from multiple databases.

Distributed

Distributed transactions

Y

Y

Y

Transactions can include tables from multiple databases. Includes transparent two phase commit functionality and XA support.

Distributed

Heterogeneous services

Y

Y

Y

Queries and transactions can involve Oracle and non-Oracle databases transparently. This functionality is used by Oracle Transparent Gateways.

Networking

N-tier authentication/ authorization

N

Y

Y

Preserves client identity throughout all tiers.

Networking

Network access control

N

Y

Y

Provides filtering capabilities between clients and servers and acts as relay for thin JDBC connections that have no access privileges to the database host

Networking

Connection pooling

Y

Y

Y

Enables the server to time-out idle sessions and use that connection to service an active session, resulting in more efficient network usage.

Networking

Multi-protocol connectivity

N

Y

Y

Bridges Oracle Net Services communities of users that use different network protocols such as SPX/IPX, TCP/IP or LU6.2.

Networking

Multiplexing

N

Y

Y

Enables multiple network sessions to coexist over a single physical transport, reducing the number of physical connections a server must maintain to support a population of clients.

Networking

Oracle Net Services

Y

Y

Y

Enables heterogeneous, distributed computing across machines regardless of vendor, operating system, or hardware architecture.

Networking

Oracle Connection Manager

N

Y

Y

Provides multiplexing, multi-protocol connectivity, and network access control.

Networking

Oracle Names

Y

Y

Y

Provides fully integrated, multi-protocol network naming service that allows administrators to centrally define service addresses, inter-database links, aliases and client configuration profiles.

Program Interfaces

AppWizard for Visual Studio (NT only)

Y

Y

Y

Eases development of Oracle based applications using Visual Studio.

Program Interfaces

Autonomous transactions

Y

Y

Y

Blocks of PL/SQL can commit independently of each other to ease complex transaction programming.

Program Interfaces

COM cartridge (NT only)

Y

Y

Y

Allows PL/SQL developers to programmatically manipulate COM objects through the OLE Automation interface. Entry points are exposed for access to the methods defined by the OLE Automation interface for easy application integration.

Program Interfaces

JDBC drivers

Y

Y

Y

Provides JDBC access to Oracle9i that is a Java call-level interface to SQL that is standards compliant and supports Oracle-specific features.

Program Interfaces

Microsoft Transaction Server Integration (NT only)

Y

Y

Y

Full, native integration with Microsoft Transaction Server allows developers to deploy COM-based applications using Microsoft Transaction Server against Oracle.

Program Interfaces

Objects for OLE

Y

Y

Y

Is a COM-based database connectivity tool that provides seamless and optimized access to Oracle databases.

Program Interfaces

ODBC driver

Y

Y

Y

Provides access to the Oracle database.

Program Interfaces

Oracle Call Interface (OCI)

Y

Y

Y

Is the lowest level API interface to the Oracle database.

Program Interfaces

Pro*C

Y

Y

Y

Easily allows C programs to use SQL to access data. Requires Oracle Programmer

Program Interfaces

SQLJ

Y

Y

Y

Allows embedded SQL statements in Java for concise and easy access to Oracle data. Requires Oracle Programmer.

System Management

Automated standby database

N

Y

Y

Provides for multiple remote standby databases that can easily be configured and automatically managed by the server, including copying and applying the transaction log files at the standby sites.

System Management

Readable standby database

N

Y

Y

Databases, including a standby database, can be opened as "read-only", where no DML operations are allowed.

System Management

Database resource management

N

Y

Y

Resources, such as CPU and degree of parallelism, can be allocated to groups of users such that a prioritization of tasks can be managed easily.

System Management

Duplexed backup sets

N

Y

Y

Backup sets can be written to multiple devices in parallel.

System Management

Oracle DBA Management Pack

Y

Y

Y

Is a set of management tools bundled with Oracle Enterprise Manager.

System Management

Fast-start fault recovery

N

Y

Y

Provides fast and predictable recovery from system failures.

System Management

Incremental backup and recovery

N

Y

Y

Allows a backup process to be set up such that only changed blocks are written to the backup file.

System Management

Legato Storage Manager

Y

Y

Y

Provides integrated functionality from Legato to allow backups directly to tapes.

System Management

Online backup and recovery

Y

Y

Y

Allows backups to be run while the database is online. Recovery operations can also be run while the database is running.

System Management

Oracle DBA Management Pack

Y

Y

Y

This Oracle Enterprise Manager management pack includes Schema Manager and other tools.

System Management

Oracle Enterprise Manager

Y

Y

Y

Is a single, integrated console that allows easy management and monitoring of the Oracle and non-Oracle database environment.

System Management

Oracle Fail Safe for Oracle9i on NT

Y

Y

Y

Makes it easy to deploy highly available single-instance Oracle9i database solutions on Microsoft Windows NT clusters.

System Management

Parallel backup and recovery

N

Y

Y

Enables both backup and recovery to be run using parallel processing.

System Management

Point-in-time tablespace recovery

N

Y

Y

Allows a tablespace to be recovered up to a specified point-in-time after a failure or inadvertent transaction execution.

System Management

Recovery Manager

Y

Y

Y

Is an easy-to-use, wizards-based functionality to setup and manage the entire backup and recovery process.

System Management

Server managed backup and recovery

Y

Y

Y

Manages the backup process, such as scheduling of backups, as well as the recovery process, such as applying the correct backup file when recovery is needed.

System Management

Transparent Application Failover

N

Y

Y

Completely masks many failures from end-users by preserving the state of their application and resuming any work that had been in progress at the time of failure.