Subject: ORACLE VERSION 7.1 FEATURES ON DESKTOP
Last Modified: 25 September 1996
Author: RBHAN
This bulletin gives a list of Oracle V7.1 database features as found on
the different ports under Desktop. In the desktop area Oracle offers a
series of RDBMS's, you have the Personal Oracle series, the Workgroup
Oracle series and the Enterprise edition.
Some of the features listed in the table were a part of V7.0 like
Dblinks, & PL/SQL. These form a basis for most of the new features of a
V7.1 database. They are required for Updatable snapshots, Symmetric data
replication and Distributed option which are found in V7.1
New Features
------------
Read-Only tablespaces, & Dynamic SQL are some of the other generic features
of a V7.1 database. Read-only tablespaces avoid redunduncy in backup &
recovery of static data. The new DBMS_SQL package allows you to use dynamic
SQL in stored procedures and PL/SQL anonymous blocks. This lets a database
user develop more flexible and general purpose procedures.
Snapshot refresh groups now allow you to refresh a collection of related
snapshots (still Read-only) to a transaction consistent point in time.
Snapshots are a mechanism for table replication and update in a networked
database environment.
Distributed Option lets you issue transactions (queries & updates)
in a distributed database system. These transactions are completely
transparent to a user of the distributed database. The mechanism by
which data integrity is achieved is through 2 phase commits. This
option requires SQL*NET V2.
2 phase commits occur when a user commits a distributed transaction
with a COMMIT statement. The commit proceeds in 2 stages, prepare phase,
& the commit phase. In the prepare phase the initiating node asks
participating nodes to prepare to commit or rollback transaction,
& in the commit phase the initiating node asks all nodes to commit
the transaction, if all partcipants can't prepare, the initiating node
asks all nodes to roll back the transaction.
Parallel Option lets you run parallel queries, do parallel recovery and
use the parallel loader to load data into the database. This feature is
really effective on operating systems that run on multiple CPU's, like
OS2 SMP, & NetWare for SMP.
Symmetric data replication lets you maintain multiple updatable copies of
data at different sites in a distributed environment. Both data-level &
schema-level changes are propogated between sites & it resolves update
conflicts through user-designated conflict resoluton routines. A basic
requirement for this feature is the availability of Updatable Snapshots
(only in V7.2), wherein a user site can issue an update to the table
located at the Master site.
Parallel server is were multiple instances (including the sga) share the same
set of database files. Only the redo information is private to each instance.
This feature is mainly for providing a higher degree of fault tolerence,
because if one instance goes down, the database can still be accessed via
other instances which share the same data files.
Legend: PO7SE Personal Oracle7
PO7EE Personal Oracle7 Enterprise edition
WGS WorkGroup Server Edition
INCL Feature included
OPT Feature present as an Option
NA Not Available
FUT Future Release
L Limited functionality
Matrix:
-------
V7.1 features PO7SE PO7EE WGS Enterprise
_____________ ______________________________________________
NT OS2 NW NT OS2 NW
______________ ______________
Procedural Options OPT OPT INCL INCL INCL INCL INCL INCL
Sql*Net NA INCL INCL INCL INCL INCL INCL INCL
Dynamic SQL INCL INCL INCL INCL INCL INCL INCL INCL
Dblinks NA INCL FUT FUT FUT INCL INCL INCL
Snapshot Groups NA INCL NA NA NA INCL INCL INCL
Updatable snapshots NA NA FUT FUT FUT FUT FUT FUT
Distributed Options NA L FUT FUT FUT OPT OPT OPT
(includes distributed
query and distributed
updates)
2 phase commits NA L NA NA NA OPT OPT OPT
Parallel Options NA NA NA NA NA FUT INCL INCL
(includes parallel query
parallel recovery &
parallel loader)
Symmetric Data Replication NA FUT NA NA NA FUT FUT FUT
Parallel Server NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
Password Manager INCL INCL INCL NA NA INCL NA NA
BackUp Manager INCL INCL INCL NA NA INCL NA NA
Recovery Manager INCL INCL INCL NA NA INCL NA NA
ORAPWD utility NA NA NA INCL INCL NA INCL INCL
Multiple Instances NO NO YES NO YES YES NO YES
NOTES:
_____
FUT indicates that the feature will be present in the future release
of the server which for most of the desktop ports is going to be V7.2
The current database version varies on different ports, they are,
Enterprise WGS
NetWare 7.1.4 7.1.3
OS2 7.1.4 7.0.16
NT 7.1.3 7.1.3
Personal Oracle7 Enterprise & Personal Oracle7 Standalone are
both at V7.1.4. Currently they are available only on Windows 3.1
Personal Oracle Enterprise V7.2 for OS/2 will be available by
July mid & the Windows95 & the PowerMac versions will be available
in the future.
Personal Oracle7 Enterprise has a limited version of the 2 phase
commit feature, it can only initate a 2 phase commit but can't
complete (i.e., accept) two-phase commit transactions.