In addition to the information in this document, the following may be of interest to you:

• For a complete overview of all new features in Oracle8i, download the Oracle8i New Feature Summary white paper.
• For users already using Oracle8i, you may want an overview of what's new in Oracle8i Release 2, as compared to release 8.1.5.  You will find this information at the end of this document.
• For a description of what features are available in each edition of the database (standard, personal, and enterprise editions), download the Oracle8i: A Family of Database Products white paper. 

What's New in Oracle8i
 

It's the database for the Internet

With solutions developed and deployed with Oracle8i, any organization is able to exploit the unlimited opportunities the Internet provides.

Oracle® interMedia enables Oracle8i to manage text, documents, image, audio, video, and locator data in an integrated fashion with other enterprise information. It includes Internet services supporting popular web client interfaces, web development tools, web servers, and streaming media servers.

Oracle® WebDB is a complete and cost-effective solution for building, deploying, and proactively monitoring Web database applications and content-driven web sites. By combining an intuitive, HTML interface with a complete set of robust, browser-based HTML tools, Oracle WebDB allows non-programmers to easily develop Web database applications and still have time to concentrate on their real jobs. Oracle WebDB is the fastest and easiest way to web-enable Oracle databases.

 

Complete Java support

Java has quickly become today's most popular programming language because it appeals to everyone, from developers who find the language robust and object-oriented, to CIOs and managers who see Java as reducing costs and simplifying application development and support. 

Oracle has been a pioneer in recognizing the promise of Java and has made a strategic commitment to Java. Oracle supports the development and deployment of Java applications for the client, middle-tier or the Oracle database. Oracle8i supports all of the major Internet standards, such as HTTP, IIOP, SSL, and stored procedures written in Java.

Oracle JServer is a scalable Java Virtual Machine (Java VM) integrated with the database server, providing customers with Java support in all tiers. With JServer, Java can be used anywhere PL/SQL can be used, including triggers, functions, and procedures. JDeveloper is a robust, GUI Java development tool that makes Java development and deployment in the Oracle environment simple. 

Data warehouse and VLDB support

Oracle8i includes many new features designed specifically to enhance the performance and manageability of very large databases and data warehouses .

Summary management is a mechanism for storing multiple dimensions and summary calculations of a table. So, when a query requests a summary of detail records, the query is transparently re-written to access the stored aggregates, rather than summing the detail records every time the query is issued. This results in dramatic response time improvement and lowering the resource costs normally associated with data warehouse queries.

Oracle8i also enhances support of data partitioning with hash and composite partitioning, to complement range partitioning introduced with Oracle8. Other features such as enhanced ANALYZE,  statistics management capabilities, indexes based on functions, and transportable tablespaces are especially useful in very large database environments.

 

Higher availability

Oracle8i includes many new features to maintain high availability .

Oracle8i includes the automated standby database feature, which improves upon the standby database features introduced in Oracle7 release 7.3. Redo log files are now automatically shipped and applied to the standby database, greatly simplifying the administration of the standby system. Another major benefit introduced with Oracle8i is that the standby database can be opened periodically for query-only access, making the standby site a perfect platform for batch query processing or data warehouse-type analysis without consuming resources on the primary platform.

Oracle8i introduces a new recovery architecture called fast-start fault recovery which reduces the time required for roll forward and completely eliminates roll-back time for transactions aborted due to system faults. In addition to faster recovery, fast-start fault recovery also allows DBAs to easily configure the server to maintain a predictable recovery time, from seconds to minutes, depending on the specific application requirements.

Oracle8i has online index builds or rebuilds, allowing users to update and query the base table while creating the index. Online index creation and rebuild improves database availability by providing users full access to data in the base table during an index build. This functionality can be also be used to do an online index-organized table defragmentation, without losing any table availability during the operation.

 

Better scalability

Oracle8i introduces the database resource manager, which provides functionality to provide greater control of system resources assigned to users. Important online users, such as order entry clerks, can be given a high priority, while other users - those running batch reports - receive lower priorities. High priority users are given more system resources than lower priority users. Users are assigned to resource classes, such as "order entry" or "executive," and each resource class is then assigned an appropriate percentage of machine resources, such as CPU.

Oracle Parallel Server provides Cache Fusion; technology for transparently scaling non-partitioned applications such as enterprise resource planning applications and Internet applications in a highly available computing environment. Cache Fusion is a superior parallel cache management scheme that uses the cluster interconnect for establishing cache coherence, across nodes, and eliminates disk I/O.

 

Improved manageability

Oracle Enterprise Manager Version 2 includes many enhancements to improve its scalability, reliability, and usability. The architecture is now 3-tier, greatly improving scalability and providing automatic load-balancing and failover for critical management services. This architecture also provides support for multiple Enterprise Manager administrators using different consoles to share real-time management information stored in a common repository. The Oracle Enterprise Manager console is now a Java-based application that can be run as an installed Java application or run from a browser.

 

Security for the Internet age

Oracle8i introduces many new feature specifically to help in the management and implementation of sophisticated security policies required by all applications, especially Internet applications.

Oracle8i introduces the concept of a Virtual Private Database, implemented using fine-grained access control which simplifies the implementation and management of row-level security. Traditionally, implementing row-level security was either done in the application or through views of the base table. Now with fine-grain access control a security policy is created and 'attached' to a table or view, and is invoked anytime a user accesses the table - from any application - limiting rows users see or can modify.

Integrated security and directory services are built using many industry standards, such as LDAP for directory access, SSL for authentication and encryption, X.509 (version 3) certificates for user authentication and single sign-on, and RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service) for devices used for authentication. Oracle8i supports all of these security standards.

Oracle Internet Directory is an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) v3 compliant directory server. A directory server is an object-oriented database repository and application that maintains hierarchically organized information, such as user information (user names, group names, security/ authorization information, preferences), application information (interfaces, locations, load-balancing information), and network information (databases, application servers, printers, file servers, hardware). 

New functionality

Oracle8i introduces new functionality in all areas of the database. Some examples include:

• Oracle8i introduces LogMiner, which allows DBAs to view the contents of the transaction log files, allowing them to view what SQL DML and DDL operations were executed, by whom, and at what time. LogMiner also creates the SQL needed to "undo" an erroneous transaction.
• Drop column command is now available to easily remove an unwanted column from a table
• WHERE criteria on EXPORT utility to limit rows exported from a table
• Temporary tables, which ease migration from other databases where this functionality has existed
• Triggers that fire on database events, such as startup/shutdown, logon/logoff, on SQL error, etc.
• Functionality to graphically monitor the progress of long running operations, such as backups, index creations, or queries

Since Oracle8i is the next release in the Oracle database, you get all of the proven, robust functionality that has existed in Oracle7 and Oracle8 Release 8.0. For customers who are currently using Oracle7, migrating to Oracle8i not only gives all of the functionality found in Oracle8i, but all of the new functionality that was introduced in Oracle8, such as:

• Oracle Partitioning, the database option that allows large tables and indexes to be partitioned to improve manageability, availability, and performance. This functionality is useful in both OLTP and data warehouse applications.
• Significant data warehouse improvements that were introduced in Oracle8, such as advanced star query optimizations and Parallel DML, both dramatically improve queries and transactions running against large tables.
• Backup and recovery functionality that was greatly enhanced in Oracle8, including the addition of Recovery Manager and incremental backups.
• Index-organized tables, where all data, including non-indexed column data, is stored in a B-tree index structure, resulting in more efficient space utilization and better performance.
• Objects functionality. Oracle8i includes all of the objects functionality that was introduced in Oracle8, such as support for complex datatypes, method support, and object tables.
• Net8 is the latest version of the product formerly known as SQL*Net. First introduced with Oracle8, Net8 adds the advanced functionality to support thousands of simultaneous connects by using Connect Manager and connection pooling so that physical network connections can be shared by more than more users, increasing scalability in 'high-think' applications, such as a data warehouse environment.
• Enhancements to all components of the database, including replication, support for LOBs (large objects), password management, and support for database messaging with Advanced Queuing.

• Oracle8i Improvements
• Enhanced Support for Internet Computing
• Advanced New Functionality

The main focus of Release 2 is to maintain stability and improve on quality, performance, and installation/configuration and management of the Oracle8i database server. 

Various components of the Oracle8i server have been optimized to perform better in Release 2. 
Oracle Parallel Server has been optimized for high availability in a two-node configuration.  PL/SQL performance has been optimized in several areas, including enhanced performance of C callouts and the manipulation and use of varrays and nested tables. Applications (including many packaged applications) that use literals instead of bind variables in SQL can see improved performance because Release 2 can automatically substitute bind variables in place of the literal values.

Installation and management of the Oracle database environment has been improved in Release 2 with new functionality in Oracle Universal Installer and Oracle Enterprise Manager.
 
 

Enhanced Support of Internet Computing

Oracle8i  Release 2 includes significant enhancements to keep pace with the technological requirements of demanding Internet applications.  Oracle JServer, the integrated Java Virtual Machine (VM) introduced with the initial release of Oracle8i, has improved performance, support for "Java2" and XML, and various other enhancements. 

Security and support of the LDAP standard have been enhanced in Release 2, allowing applications to efficiently implement  and manage robust security policies. 

Development and management of Internet applications is simplified with the addition of PL/SQL Pages and with enhancements to Oracle interMedia.
 
 

Advanced New Functionality

Oracle8i Release 2 introduces many new features to improve the functionality and performance of the Oracle database, including several important improvements for data warehouse and object relational applications.

Oracle8i Release 2 introduces a powerful new family of SQL functions for business intelligence and data-warehousing applications. These functions are collectively called analytic functions, and they provide significantly improved performance for many business analysis queries. Some examples of the new capabilities are:

• Ranking ("Find the top 10 sales reps in each region.") 
• Moving aggregates ("What is the 200-day moving average of our companys stock price?")
• Period-over-period comparisons ("What is the percentage growth of January 1999 over January 1998?")
• Ratio-to-report ("What is Januarys sales as a percentage of the entire years?")
• Other functions include:  Cumulative aggregates and lag/lead expressions

New functionality in Oracle Enterprise Manager supports the creation and management of materialized views and related dimensions and hierarchies via a graphical interface, greatly simplifying the management of materialized views.

The refresh capabilities of materialized views has been enhanced to allow partition maintenance operations to be executed on base tables without requiring a full refresh of associated materialized views. For example, a material view is not marked as 'stale' if partitions are dropped and a materialized view can be fast-refreshed as a new partition is added.

The administration functionality of composite partitioning, the combination of range partitioning and hash partitioning, has also been improved such that it is much easier to support a "rolling-window" data application. An entire hash-partitioned table, with all of its partitions, can be exchanged with a composite-partitioned tables range partition and all of its hash subpartitions.
 
 

More Oracle8i Release 2 Information

Many noteworthy features have been added or enhanced in Oracle8i release2 .  For more details, see the "Oracle8i Release 2 New Feature Summary" or  the "Getting to Know Oracle8i"  manual in your documentation set.