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Oracle ODBC Driver Facts & Information
Oracle ODBC Driver Download - A Free 15-Day Evaluation
Choose DataDirect for the Highest Quality Oracle ODBC Driver
Built on the knowledge and technology assets DataDirect Technologies has acquired over the past 17 years, the DataDirect Connect Oracle ODBC driver is known as the best performing, highest quality, and most functional Oracle ODBC driver available on the market today. Millions of clients and over 250 OEMs and technology partners worldwide who have standardized on DataDirect products can attest to the quality and reliability of our technology.
The next section outlines the features and functionality of the DataDirect Connect (32-bit) and DataDirect Connect64 (64-bit) Oracle ODBC drivers, confirming our focus on and commitment to standards-based connectivity. DataDirect Technologies offers both 32- and 64-bit Oracle ODBC drivers in two versions: a Wire Protocol driver requiring no client software and a client driver that uses Oracle Net to connect to the underlying Oracle server. The following sections refer to these drivers collectively as the DataDirect Connect Series Oracle ODBC drivers. Answers that apply only to the Wire Protocol drivers or only to the client drivers are so noted.
Features and Functions of DataDirect Connect Series Oracle ODBC Drivers
Wire Protocol Technology - Only in the DataDirect Oracle ODBC Driver
Optimized Using Wire Protocol Technology
The Wire Protocol Oracle ODBC driver connects to Oracle servers without the need for any Oracle client software. The drivers are optimized to communicate directly and efficiently with Oracle servers using the Oracle server wire protocol. Benchmarks on the DataDirect web site demonstrate up to 500% performance gains over traditional Oracle client-based drivers.
IMPORTANCE: Organizations want the fastest possible access to their Oracle database servers. ODBC drivers that use Oracle client software are limited by the performance features that are available in the Oracle Call Interface (OCI). Wire protocol drivers communicate directly to the Oracle server and can leverage any performance optimizations the server exposes, potentially even optimizations that cannot be exposed through the OCI.
Additionally, configuring and supporting Oracle client software across the entire enterprise, along with various dependencies imposed by some ODBC drivers, can be a huge support burden. Using wire protocol drivers removes the dependencies on any other software and greatly lessens the support cost.
Oracle-Specific Support
Connects to Oracle 7 through Oracle 10g Servers
Wire Protocol drivers only-The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle Wire Protocol drivers support Oracle8i R2 and R3 (8.1.6 and 8.1.7) servers; Oracle9i R1 and R2 (9.0.1 and 9.2) servers; and Oracle 10g R1 (10.1). They connect to the server directly without the need for any Oracle client software.
Client drivers only-The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle client drivers support Oracle 7.3.4 and higher servers; Oracle 8.0.5 and higher servers; Oracle8i R1, R2, and R3 (8.1.5, 8.1.6, and 8.1.7) servers; Oracle9i R1 and R2 (9.0.1 and 9.2) servers; and Oracle 10g R1 (10.1) servers.
For current specific support information, see http://www.datadirect.com/products/odbc/matrix/connectodbc.htm and http://www.datadirect.com/products/odbc64/matrix/connect64odbc.htm.
IMPORTANCE: Oracle 10g, the latest database released by Oracle, is considered strategic. The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers support a full complement of both Oracle servers and clients that allows more autonomy within organizations where upgrades or changes in the server software often are a gradual process.
Supports the Latest Oracle Features
The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers fully support features such as CLOBs, BLOBs, BFILEs, and other data type enhancements. The drivers also support features such as setting the number of seconds to wait on a lock timeout, ANSI Outer Joins, and materialized views. In addition, Oracle10g supports Grid computing, server-side Load Balancing and further SQL and data type enhancements.
IMPORTANCE: Oracle 10g is the latest release from Oracle and contains many new features. A driver that lacks full support for Oracle data types is significantly limited in usability for the future.
Oracle Stored Procedures (PL/SQL) Returning Result Sets
The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers fully support returning result sets (including multiple result sets) generated from PL/SQL stored procedures against 7, 8, 8i, 9i, and 10g servers. This implementation is:
Standards-based-Calling an Oracle stored procedure and returning a result set is done the same way it would be done for other databases, such as Informix or Sybase, and the way it would be expected by any third-party application.
Fully functional-Business logic written in PL/SQL is not limited to a single result set. Multiple result sets can be returned from a single invocation, which allows the greatest application flexibility and performance.
IMPORTANCE: Organizations want to leverage PL/SQL to place optimized business logic on the server. This feature provides maximum performance and functionality using well-tuned PL/SQL routines. Using ODBC-compliant syntax ensures application flexibility and interoperability. Investing in high quality, fully functional ODBC products for Oracle ensures that an organization can leverage the functionality of their Oracle investments and save the long-term cost of redeployment of a solution.
Functionality
ODBC 3.52 Specification Support
The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers fully support the ODBC 3.52 specification, thereby providing maximum flexibility and utility.
IMPORTANCE: The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers are the only ones that fully support the ODBC 3.52 specification. DataDirect Technologies is the recognized industry leader for providing stable, scalable, and reliable connectivity to Oracle. The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers are installed and used in production environments around the globe and are shipped in numerous applications because of the breadth of their specification support.
Cursor Support
The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers optimize forward-only cursors to pre-fetch multiple records, reducing network traffic and improving performance. Two types of scrollable cursors are supported to allow maximum application flexibility:
- Static cursors are ideal for applications that require high levels of concurrency on the database server and require the ability to scroll forwards and backwards through result sets. The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers fully implement the static cursor model and provide options to fine-tune static cursor performance (for example, options allowing you to set how much long textual data is cached).
- Keyset-driven cursors are the preferred scrollable cursor model when the application cannot afford to buffer the data from a static cursor. The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers implement a robust keyset-cursor model that works well with dynamic enterprise applications.
IMPORTANCE: Forward-only cursors allow only one pass through the data, which can severely limit application flexibility. Static scrollable cursors provide application flexibility, but they must be used judiciously because of performance issues when caching large amounts of data. Keyset-driven scrollable cursors provide the most application flexibility and are very important in building enterprise-level applications.
Microsoft DTC Support
The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers leverage the facilities of the Microsoft DTC environment in a user-friendly and flexible manner. No separate installation packages are required and DTC is supported "straight out of the box" against multiple versions of the Oracle8i, Oracle9i, and Oracle 10g server platforms. The drivers provide flexible recognition features that detect Oracle8i, Oracle9i, and Oracle 10g settings to allow for maximum performance and throughput in any Microsoft Transaction Server/DTC environment.
IMPORTANCE: Enterprise applications running in the Windows NT/2000/XP/Server 2003 environment will probably use Microsoft Transaction Server and its DTC capabilities. It is essential that those DTC capabilities be exposed fully and in a manner that provides for administration and deployment flexibility within the enterprise.
Unicode Support
The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers fully support Unicode across all operating system platforms.
IMPORTANCE: The support for Unicode is in response to the needs of multi-national organizations requiring the use of international character sets from a single application.
Connection Failover and Client-Side Load Balancing
The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers provide Connection Failover and client-side Load Balancing.
IMPORTANCE: Connection Failover allows the driver to try to connect to alternate servers when the primary server connection is unavailable. Load Balancing means that these connection attempts will be random, thereby not overloading the primary server. These features ensure that access to your critical data will not be impeded by the failure of a particular server.
XML Persistence
The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers fully support XML persistence.
IMPORTANCE: DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers include functionality that enables retrieval of result sets from an Oracle relational database and stores the result sets as XML data files. The benefit is that a company can quickly publish information to the Web and allow customers to interact with the data it publishes. Currently, the DataDirect Connect Series drivers offers the only ODBC drivers on the market that provide this functionality.
Full Outer Join Syntax
The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers support full outer join syntax, including extensions such as nested outer joins.
IMPORTANCE: Full join support is very important when building queries to allow full access and usability of company data.
Platforms Supported
The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers support Windows and UNIX platforms, including Linux.
For current specific support information, see http://www.datadirect.com/products/odbc/matrix/connectodbc.htm and http://www.datadirect.com/products/odbc64/matrix/connect64odbc.htm
IMPORTANCE: Full support for all operating environments allows greater flexibility within an enterprise for making changes on deployment platforms at a controlled pace. The cross-platform flexibility of the DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers allows you to have one vendor with common functionality across all platforms.
Quality and Reliability
Leading Vendor of Standards-Based Data Access Technology
DataDirect Technologies is the leading data connectivity vendor in the industry, supporting more than 130 combinations of platforms and databases. Nearly every major software vendor relies on DataDirect technology, including Oracle, Informix, CA-Ingres, Sybase, IBM, Lotus, Microsoft, Tandem, Pervasive, Seagate, Silicon Graphics, Compaq, Apple, Hewlett Packard, SUN, and over 250 other OEMs.
IMPORTANCE: DataDirect Technologies is considered the industry leader in standard-based data access technology (including JDBC, ODBC, ADO.NET, and ADO/OLE DB) and is relied upon by almost all major database vendors and OEMs. This further demonstrates our leadership position, strength and commitment in this technology. Searching through News Groups on data access or groups.google.com provides better first-hand insight on the quality and reliability reputation that we have throughout the industry. . Additionally, DataDirect Technologies is the only vendor of standards-based middleware that fully supports Oracle features across all its middleware products.
Certified with All Major Third-Party Applications
DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers are rigorously tested to the highest standards by our own OVS (ODBC Verification Suite) with all major third-party applications. Over 15 staff years of development is invested in building the OVS, which is continually updated as new ODBC specifications and new DBMS/OS releases are available. In addition, we have extensive third-party test suites developed by DataDirect Technologies and our 250+ OEMs that ensure our technology is compatible with all major dataware applications available.
All Microsoft tests are used to verify conformance with all aspects of integrating ODBC products into Microsoft environments, including the ODBC conformance suite, Microsoft IIS stress load suite, SQL Server Data Transformation Services suite, SQL Server distributed query processing suite, and SQL Server replication suite. DataDirect Technologies is the only vendor outside of Microsoft that has access to these suites.
IMPORTANCE: Investing in a driver that is highly tested and certified with a wide variety of applications available across the industry protects an organization against unnecessary and crippling downtime, vendor application lock-in, and increased support and maintenance costs.
Performance Driver Optimizations
Performance Tuning Options
Drivers include options such as ArraySize, CachedCursorLimit, CachedDescriptionLimit, CatalogIncludesSynonyms, DefaultLongDataBuffLen, DescribeAtPrepare, EnableStaticCursorsForLongData, OptimizeLongPerformance, ProcedureRetResults, ServerType, and UseCurrentSchema.
IMPORTANCE: As no two environments are alike, these options supported by DataDirect allow you to fine-tune your environment to increase performance and decrease network traffic.
Optimized for Third-Party Applications
The DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers offer several application-specific tuning options to allow maximum performance and functionality for many of today's third-party applications.
IMPORTANCE: Different applications implement ODBC differently. In fact, tuning options and workarounds sometimes need to be created to allow an ODBC driver to function optimally with a specific application. Examples of such applications not only include all Microsoft applications, but also PowerBuilder, Lotus Suite, and many others.
Services
Technical Support
DataDirect Technologies' total focus is on data access middleware. Our approach is one of partnership with our customers and all DBMS vendors. DataDirect Technologies offers robust, worldwide-support through phone, interactive web, email, and fax. We have the largest knowledgebase in the industry on ODBC, applications, and middleware. Our support constantly ranks above a 95% approval rating from our customers and is one of the main reasons our data connectivity technology has become the industry standard, relied on by millions of users and 250+ OEMs.
IMPORTANCE: The TCO is generally not in the initial acquisition cost of the software. It is in the support, administration, and incurred downtime costs inherent with network architectures. Superior technical support is essential to reducing these costs, allowing applications and your business to run uninterrupted.
Summary
Investing in and deploying the right solution today saves companies money in both the short and long term because the correct product can support their current as well as future needs. DataDirect Connect Series Oracle drivers are the best solution on the market today for quality, reliability, performance, Oracle-specific support and functionality, and for services such as technical support.
