What's New in Oracle Call Interface?

The following sections describe the new features in Oracle Call Interface:

Oracle9i Release 1 (9.0.1) New Features in Oracle Call Interface

This section contains these topics:

Borland Support

Oracle Corporation only ships an import library, oci.lib, for use with the Microsoft Compiler. Other compilers, for example, Borland, though likely compatible with the Oracle DLLs, are not tested and supported by Oracle for use with Oracle Call Interface.
Using Oracle9i on Windows 2000

There are some differences between using Oracle9i on Windows 2000 and Windows NT 4.0.

See Also:
Oracle9i Database Getting Started for Windows

Oracle8i Release 1 (8.1.5) New Features in Oracle Call Interface

OCI includes many new functions and performance enhancements that extend the capabilities of the OCI to handle objects in an Oracle8i database. To use object functionality, you must have installed Oracle8i Enterprise Edition.

For Windows platforms, OCI includes support for applications written with earlier releases (7.x/8.x) of OCI. Oracle has now removed any version number from the library name oci.lib.

OCI Release 7.x Functions

OCI functions available in Release 7.x are still available, but they are not able to take full advantage of new Oracle8i features. Oracle recommends that existing applications start using the new calls to improve performance and provide increased functionality.

For Win32 applications running on Windows NT or Windows 95/98, this means that these applications will need to migrate to the new Release 8.x OCI calls in order to continue to be supported. In Release 8.x, the library and DLL containing the OCI calls is named oci.lib and oci.dll. In Release 7.x, they were named ociw32.lib and ociw32.dll. At some point in the future, ociw32.lib and ociw32.dll will no longer be supported or released, making migration to the new calls mandatory.