Cartridge Services -- Introduction

This chapter describes a set of services that will help you create data cartridges in the Oracle8i Extensibility framework.

Using Oracle Cartridge Services offers you these advantages:

Portability

Oracle Cartridge Services offers you the flexibility to work across different machine architectures

Flexibility Within Oracle Environments

Another type of flexibility is offered to you in terms of the fact that all cartridge services will work with your Oracle Database irrespective of the configuration of operations that has been purchased by your client.

Language Independence

The use of the NLS services lets you internationalize your cartridge. Language independence means that you can have different instances of your cartridge operating in different language environments.

Tight Integration with the Server

Various cartridge services have been designed to facilitate access with Oracle ORDBMS. This offers far superior performance to client -side programs attempting to perform the same operations.

Guaranteed Compatibility

Oracle is a rapidly evolving technology and it is likely that your clients might be operating with different releases of Oracle. The cartridge services will operate with all versions of Oracle database.

Integration of Different Cartridges

The integration of cartridge services lets you produce a uniform integration of different data cartridges.

The following sections provide a brief introduction to the set of services that you can use as part of your data cartridge. The APIs that describe these interfaces are described in Chapter 9, "Using Cartridge Services"