Direct Oracle Access

What is Direct Oracle Access?

Whether you're using Delphi or Borland's C++ Builder to develop Oracle applications, the Direct Oracle Access component set can help you seamlessly integrate this great development tool and database system. Not only will your application get the most out of both products, but the application development process will also benefit from the following core features:

High performance

Both in-line transaction processing and batch processing applications can benefit from Oracle's performance capabilities.

Oracle direct access, as the name suggests, directly accesses the Oracle interface. This ensures optimal performance for standard database access functions.

Support for Array Fetching, Array DML, PL/SQL Blocks, PL/SQL Tables, Location Caching, and Direct Path Load Engine allow you to further optimize application performance-critical functions.

Easy application distribution:

An Oracle direct access application does not require middleware such as BDE or ODBC, it simply requires Oracle SQL*Net or Net8. Consequently, you can deploy your application without many of the configuration or version configuration issues typically involved with middleware installation.

Oracle package support Most PL/SQL codes in Oracle databases are packaged.

Direct Oracle Access provides a TOraclePackage component that allows you to easily call packaged program units without detailed declarations of these program units and their parameters.

In addition, Direct Oracle Access includes a Package Wizard that can generate classes to encapsulate program units and write types defined in packages. This will make your Oracle packages a natural extension of the Object Pascal or C++ language.

TOracleDataSet

The Direct Oracle Access dataset component supports blocking Oracle records, updating records, server-generated values, automatic generation of sequence values, and BLOB compression.

Master/detail relationships can be configured automatically if there is a foreign key between the master and the detail table, or if the master table contains one or more columns or collection attributes (nested table or varray).

TOracleDataSet can use much of the information in Oracle Dictionary at runtime.

Server restrictions can be checked on the client, and restriction error messages can be read from a message table. Format masks, range values, and default values can also be read in the dictionary. This allows you to build applications with a minimum amount of database knowlegde compiled in the executable, adopting dynamic changes to the database without even recompiled it.

Query Mode:

for example The TOracleDataSet component has a Query By Example mode that allows you to provide QBE forms in your application without any additional programming and without additional components or controls. The resulting QBE queries run on the Oracle server, so performance will be optimal and network traffic will be minimal. The user can provide simple query values, such as JONES or 100, can include wildcards for string values, such as JON%, and can include comparison operators such as>, <, NOT, BETWEEN, IN, and so on.

Monitor Oracle:

To monitor the database access activities of your Direct Oracle Access application, you can use the Oracle Monitor utility.

It displays sql, variables, timestamp, elapsed time, network statistics, database statistics, and query execution plan for each activity. This can be useful for finding performance bottlenecks, for tuning purposes, and for resolving application errors.

Alert and pipe events

Oracle Server includes a dbms_alert and dbms_pipe for event processing. TOracleEvent in Direct Oracle Access can act as a receiver for these events. It works on a background segment of your application and can propagate database events to events from familiar objects. These events can occur synchronously or asynchronously with the main segment of your application. SQL Scripts If you need to perform multiple data definition language (DDL) statements, for example, to perform the database installation part, you can use the TOracleScript component. It has a property editor that allows you to develop the script and the individual commands. The extensible scripting language follows the basic SQL* Plus syntax and supports all SQL statements. It also supports replacement variables to make your scripts customizable.

Advanced Queuing To take advantage of Oracle8's Advanced Queuing option you can make use of the TOracleQueue component.

The TOracleQueue component encapsulates the basic functionality of the DBMS_AQ. It provides a convenient way to store messages in a queue or to pull messages from a queue.

Messages can be disabled in a background segment of your application, and events that are generated in focused mode can occur synchronously or asynchronously with the main thread of your application.

Session PoolIng In server applications that often need to create sessions to process client application requests, it can be useful to use the connection pool. Without a pool concept, each request can lead to a real database login and logo.

By using the TOracleSessionPool component, you can maintain a set of database sessions that can be used and reused for different requests. You can set the minimum of a maximum number of sessions in the pool, set the TimeOut behavior for inactive sessions in the pool, and default the user name, password, and database.

Support for Oracle-specific features Direct Oracle Access supports many Oracle-specific features. In addition to the features mentioned above, it supports Oracle8 and Oracle8i features such as LOB Locators, Objects & References, XMLTYPE, Timestamps, Roaming, Password Expiration, External Procedure Development, and Oracle Services for MTS.

System requirements:

Direct Oracle Access requires a Windows 95, 98, ME, NT4, 2000, XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 client, with Oracle SQL* Net, Net 8, Net 9, Net 10, Net 11, or Net 12 installed.

Supported versions of Oracle Server are 7.x, 8.x, 8i, 9i, 10g, 11g, and 12c on any platform.

Direct Oracle Access is available for all recent versions of Delphi and C++ Builder.