Introduction to Oracle Extensions

Oracle provides two implementations of its JDBC drivers--one that supports Sun Microsystems JDK 1.2.x and complies with the Sun JDBC 2.0 standard, and one that supports JDK 1.1.x and complies with the Sun JDBC 1.22 standard.

Beyond standard features, Oracle JDBC drivers provide Oracle-specific type extensions and performance extensions.

Note: The JDBC OCI, Thin, and server-side internal drivers support the same functionality and all the Oracle extensions.

Both implementations include the following Java packages:

• oracle.sql (classes to support all Oracle type extensions)

• oracle.jdbc.driver (classes to support database access and updates in Oracle type formats)

In addition to these packages, the implementation for JDK 1.1.x includes the following Java package. This package supports some JDBC 2.0 features by providing interfaces that mimic the JDBC 2.0 interfaces in the standard java.sql package:

• oracle.jdbc2 (interfaces equivalent to standard JDBC 2.0 interfaces)

(For example, oracle.jdbc2.Struct mimics java.sql.Struct, which exists in JDK 1.2.)

"Oracle JDBC Packages and Classes" further describes the preceding packages and their classes.

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