Oracle JDBC Drivers 7.3.3.1.3 beta-release README Contact Information ------------------- These drivers, being beta, are supported only by e-mail. Please report any problems to jdbcsup@us.oracle.com. Versions -------- - Oracle Servers: Oracle 7 and up, Oracle 8.0.3. - Oracle Clients: Oracle 7.3.2 and up, Oracle 8.0.3. - JDK: 1.0.2 or 1.1.1. JDK 1.1.2 not tested but should work. - JDBC: 1.22 - For applets: Netscape 3.0 or 4.0 - Solaris: 2.5 - Win95/NT: Win95, NT 3.51 and NT 4.0. We do not support the Oracle 8.0.2 beta release; you have to upgrade to the full 8.0.3 release. Incompatible changes from 7.3.0.0.1 (Alpha release) --------------------------------------------------- - The classes are now provided in zip files in the lib subdirectory. See "Installation" below for CLASSPATH information. - The driver class name and the connection URLs have changed. See "Usage" below for the new values. - The Win95/NT and Solaris releases contain all three JDBC drivers: - JDBC OCI 7 for use with an Oracle 7 client installation. - JDBC OCI 8 for use with an Oracle 8 client installation. - JDBC Thin for use in applets or without a client installation. - We support JDBC 1.22 instead of JDBC 1.01. The major difference is that the Numeric class in JDBC 1.01 has been replaced by the BigDecimal class in JDBC 1.22. You have to replace in your code all occurrences of Numeric with BigDecimal, and import java.math.BigDecimal. Other changes from 7.3.0.0.1 (Alpha release) -------------------------------------------- - More code samples are now available in the samples directory. - The on-line doc, in the doc directory, is more complete. Please read it. - We provide JDBC performance extensions: Row prefetching, Batching of updates and Defines. See doc/contents.html and samples/oci7. - We support stored procedures returning ResultSets. See doc/contents.html and samples/oci7/RefCursorExample.java. - We support NLS databases, with some limitations for the JDBC Thin driver. See doc/contents.html. - We provide basic support for BLOB, CLOB and CFILE Oracle 8 types when using JDBC OCI8 and Oracle 8.0.3. See doc/contents.html and samples/oci8. Installation ------------ To avoid potential confusion with the previous version of the JDBC driver we highly recommend that you uninstall the alpha release when installing the beta release. Please do not try to have both the alpha and beta release drivers in your CLASSPATH. Win95/NT with the Oracle Installer - Uzip the distribution in c:\temp. - Point the Oracle Installer to the directory c:\temp. - Install the driver. - Add [ORACLE_HOME]\jdbc\lib\classes111.zip to your CLASSPATH. (If using JDK-1.0.2 add classes102.zip instead.) Win95/NT without the Oracle Installer - Uzip the distribution in c:\jdbc. - Add C:\jdbc\lib\classes111.zip to your CLASSPATH. (If using JDK-1.0.2 add classes102.zip instead.) - Add C:\jdbc\lib to your PATH. Solaris - Untar the distribution in /local/jdbc. - Add /local/jdbc/lib/classes111.zip to your CLASSPATH. (If using JDK-1.0.2 add classes102.zip instead.) - Add /local/jdbc/lib to your LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Known bugs and restrictions --------------------------- Please see the on-line documentation in the DOC directory. What you get in the release --------------------------- The "lib" directory contains: - classes111.zip: classes for use with the JDK 1.1.1. Contain all the JDBC driver classes. - classes102.zip: classes for use with the JDK 1.0.2. Contain all the JDBC driver classes and the JDBC 1.22 classes as they are not a standard part of the JDK 1.0.2 distribution. - oci733jdbc.dll (.so on Solaris): the shared library used by the JDBC OCI7 driver. On Win95/NT the library is moved to the [ORACLE_HOME]\bin directory when installed using Oracle Installer. - oci803jdbc.dll (.so on Solaris): the shared library used by the JDBC OCI8 driver. On Win95/NT the library is moved to the [ORACLE_HOME]\bin directory when installed using Oracle Installer. The "doc" directory contains the on-line documentation for the JDBC drivers (contents.html). The "samples" directory contains sample programs. Usage (See special case for JDBC Thin 1.0.2 at the end) ------------------------------------------------------- You must import the JDBC classes in your programs that use JDBC. import java.sql.*; import java.math.*; Your JDBC program must load the Oracle driver before being able to use it. One way to do that is to include the following line at the beginning of you "main": Class.forName ("oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver"); You open a connection to the database with the getConnection call. The connection URL depends on the JDBC driver you want to use: JDBC OCI7: Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection ("jdbc:oracle:oci7:@", "scott", "tiger"); is either an entry in tnsnames.ora or a SQL*net name-value pair. JDBC OCI8: Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection ("jdbc:oracle:oci8:@", "scott", "tiger"); is either an entry in tnsnames.ora or a SQL*net name-value pair. JDBC Thin: Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection ("jdbc:oracle:thin:@", "scott", "tiger"); is either a string of the form :: or a SQL*net name-value pair. Special case for the JDBC Thin 1.0.2 ------------------------------------- For the JDBC Thin 1.0.2 the imports, class name and URL are different. Imports: import jdbc.sql.*; import jdbc.math.*; Class Name: Class.forName ("oracle.jdbc.dnlddriver.OracleDriver"); JDBC Thin 1.0.2 URL: Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection ("jdbc:oracle:dnldthin:@", "scott", "tiger"); is either a string of the form :: or a SQL*net name-value pair.