1. Learning Database New Features
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2 Application Development

Application Express

Parent topic: Application Development

Application Backups

Oracle Application Express automatically backs up modified applications as a part of daily maintenance.

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Parent topic: Application Express

Dark Mode

Decrease eye strain by enabling Dark Mode.

The development environment can now render with a darker color scheme, which reduces eye strain and is especially helpful for developing late into the night.

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Parent topic: Application Express

Export App as Zip

You can now export your Application Express apps as a single zip file, which can facilitate integration with GIT / SVN and simplify incremental deployment. The zip file mirrors the directory structure of the APEXExport -split utility and splits your application, pages, and shared components into separate files for easy management.

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Parent topic: Application Express

Faceted Search

Faceted search, or faceted navigation, provides an easy-to-use interface to narrow the results of a report and quickly locate specific data.

Like other declarative data-driven components in Application Express, you can create a faceted search page on an existing table, an arbitrary SQL query, an ORDS REST-Enabled SQL Service, or virtually any REST endpoint. Using an intelligent auto-discovery and scoring algorithm, recommended facets are automatically created based upon data distribution, related tables, column sizes, distinct values, average data length, and more. You can customize the recommended facets and easily add new facets using a robust set of declarative attributes.

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Parent topic: Application Express

Friendly URL Syntax

Oracle Application Express application URL syntax has been simplified to support friendlier URLs at runtime. Friendly URLs features application or page numbers, and instead, uses the workspace path prefix, application and page aliases, and standard web parameter syntax for its URL structure.

The new syntax provides a Search Engine Optimization (SEO)-friendly URL structure which is far easier to understand and provides immediate context as to where you are within an app.

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Parent topic: Application Express

Mega Menus

The Universal Theme now supports Mega Menu navigation. Mega Menu navigation renders app navigation as a collapsible floating panel that displays all navigation items at once. Mega Menu navigation is especially useful for displaying the various aspects of your app and enables direct access to app sections.

Mega Menu navigation includes a number of template options that enable you to customize the layout and appearance so it uniquely works for your app. You can extend Mega Menu items to include icons, descriptions, and even badges using custom list attributes. No matter the layout for larger screens, the mega menu gracefully adjusts its appearance to fit small screen devices. Mega Menus are fully accessible and keyboard friendly.

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Parent topic: Application Express

Native PDF Printing

You can now print PDF files directly from interactive grids. This feature produces a PDF file which includes formatting options such as highlighting, column grouping, and column breaks. To make use of this feature, simply enable PDF as an additional download format in your region attributes.

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Parent topic: Application Express

New Data Upload

The data upload functionality has been modernized to support native Excel, CSV, XML and JSON documents.

Data upload in SQL Workshop features a new drag and drop user interface that provides support for uploading native Excel, CSV, XML and JSON documents into a new table or into existing tables. These same capabilities can be accessed from the Create Application Wizard by selecting the From a File option.

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Parent topic: Application Express

New Form Region

A new Form region type provides superior functionality compared to the old legacy form pages.

A new Form region type provides support for internal and external data sources (that is, Local Database, REST Enabled SQL Service, or Web Source). Forms can be created on SQL queries, or by creating PL/SQL Functions returning SQL Queries. In addition, this new Form region type supports more than two Primary Key Columns and includes more control on Lost Update detection and Row Locking. Finally, you can migrate existing legacy form pages to the new form region with the Upgrade Application function in App Builder Utilities.

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Parent topic: Application Express

New Team Development

The Team Development application has been completely reimagined to provide a simple and easy way for your team to collaborate together.

Team Development provides a simple, conversational approach to team communication. Create an issue to track everything in a single place. You can classify issues using label groups and labels, create templates to provide users with starter text for issues and comments, and track progress by assigning milestones. Individual users can register their interest in specific issues and define at a general level what attributes they are interested in watching. Users can also choose whether they wish to be notified in the application, by email, or both.

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Parent topic: Application Express

Oracle JET Charts

With every release, Oracle Application Express upgrades Oracle JET Charts. Oracle Application Express release 20.1 includes JavaScript Extension Toolkit (JET) 8.3.0.

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Parent topic: Application Express

Popup List of Values (LOV)

Oracle Application Express introduces the completely redesigned Popup List of Values (LOV) which now supports multiple display columns, multiple return values, search-as-you-type, improved multiple value selection, and an all-new simplified user interface.

Parent topic: Application Express

Redwood UI

The Oracle Application Express user interface has been refreshed to align better with Redwood, Oracle's new user experience design language.

The new design and color scheme extends across the full developer experience and provides refreshing new visuals. The appearance of Application Express can now automatically switch between the dark and light appearance modes based on your OS or platform setting.

Parent topic: Application Express

Remote Application Deployment

Deploy an application to remote Oracle Application Express instances using REST Enabled SQL references.

One-click remote application deployment leverages the existing REST Enabled SQL references that works with a Oracle REST Data Services (ORDS) REST Enabled SQL Service.

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Parent topic: Application Express

REST Read / Write Enhancements

Read and write data using REST Enabled SQL references or Web Source Modules.

Define a REST Enabled SQL reference once and use it across a workspace. Create Web Source Modules to define the source within each application. Both approaches are fully declarative, using Data Discovery with parameters. Forms and interactive grids now include built-in support for the internal or external data source you specify.

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Parent topic: Application Express

Shared List of Values (LOV)

Shared List of Values (LOV) in Oracle Application Express include significant enhancements and new functionality. Shared LOVs now support the full set of data sources (table, SQL Query, function returning SQL query, ORDS REST-Enabled SQL Service and Web Source Modules), declarative column mappings, multiple display columns, grouping, embedded icons, and more.

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Parent topic: Application Express

SQL Workshop Now Supports Simple Oracle Document Access (SODA)

SQL Workshop has now been extended to support Simple Oracle Document Access (SODA) collections. Create and store collections of documents in Oracle Database, retrieve them, and query them, without needing to know Structured Query Language (SQL) or how the documents are stored in the database. You can load data to a SODA collection as JSON, TXT, or ZIP files.

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Parent topic: Application Express

Universal Theme Enhancements

The Universal Theme includes UI refinements, accessibility improvements, new template options, and Theme Roller enhancements.

Universal Theme contains many accessibility improvements including a new Skip to Main Content link. The Universal Theme also includes two additional styles for the tree-based Navigation Menu and a new Inline Popup region template. Finally, a number of components and styles have been visually tweaked and refined to provide a more streamlined user interface.

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Parent topic: Application Express

Globalization

Parent topic: Application Development

Enhanced Parallel Execution Applicability

Parallel execution can now be used for abstract data types, character keys with linguistic sorts, and timestamp with time zone.

Broadening the applicability of parallel execution to non-native data types can increase the performance of applications using these data types.

Parent topic: Globalization

New German Linguistic Sorts for Capital Sharp S Support

Two new linguistic sorts (XGERMAN_S and XGERMAN_DIN_S) are added to Oracle Database to support Latin Capital Letter Sharp S as the uppercase form of Latin Smaller Letter Sharp S.

This feature expands the database linguistic support to meet the requirements of the German market.

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Parent topic: Globalization

New Era Support for Japanese Imperial Calendar

The new Japanese era Reiwa, which went into effect on May 1, 2019, is now supported in Oracle Database for the Japanese Imperial Calendar.

The Japanese Imperial Calendar is used widely in Japan in addition to the Gregorian Calendar. Supporting the new era is an essential requirement for software distributed in the Japanese market.

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Parent topic: Globalization

Unicode 12.1 Support

The National Language Support (NLS) data files for AL32UTF8 and AL16UTF16 character sets are updated to match version 12.1 of the Unicode Standard character database. The support for Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA) is also updated to conform with UCA 12.1.

This enhancement enables Oracle Database to conform to the latest version of the Unicode Standard.

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Parent topic: Globalization

Near Zero Downtime

Starting with Oracle Database 21c, you have the option of performing this method while the database is online or offline. The online version of this method requires one restart of the database at your convenience and requires minimal locks on tables that need to be upgraded. It allows applications to query all time zone data and to insert and modify time zone data for all tables that can be migrated online. The offline version of this method, which was also available in previous releases, requires the database to be in UPGRADE mode during part of the procedure and is more restrictive about when applications can insert and modify time zone data.

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Parent topic: Globalization

Java in Oracle Database

Parent topic: Application Development

Oracle JVM Security Enhancements

Oracle Java virtual machine (JVM) security has been enhanced to make it well suited for pluggable databases (PDBs). The enhancements also include support for the new Java module system and safeguarding of Oracle JVM against security vulnerabilities.

The enhanced Oracle JVM security makes it safe to use Oracle JVM with pluggable databases (PDB) and shields it from security vulnerabilities like the Spectre attack. In addition, it simplifies developing Java in the database applications using the new module system.

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Parent topic: Java in Oracle Database

JDBC

Parent topic: Application Development

Java Library for Reactive Streams Ingestion

This new Java library allows high-speed ingestion of data streams with non-blocking back pressure.

Java applications that use the provided APIs may continuously receive and ingest data from a large group of clients.

The ingestion process is non-blocking and extremely fast through the direct path load into the database tables. The library performs affinity grouping by destination including Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) nodes, Oracle Active Data Guard, and Sharded database. The library performs CPU optimization by decoupling record processing from database IO. Through the Universal Connection Pool (UCP), the ingestion process furnishes high availability and scalability.

This feature enables implementing high-speed ingestion of streaming data including sensors data, time series (trading), Call Detail Records (CDRs), geoSpatial activities, social media feeds, web site logs, and so on, with scalability and high availability.

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Parent topic: JDBC

JDBC DataSource for Sharded Databases Access

You can use the new JDBC datasource to simplify the access of Java applications to sharded databases, where the applications can connect to the sharded databases transparently, with almost no change to the application code.

This feature enables Java connectivity to a sharded database without the need for a Java application to furnish a sharding key because the sharding data source derives the sharding key from the SQL statement. Your Java applications can scale out to sharded databases transparently as there is little to no change to the application code.

The sharding data source optimizes the performance of your applications as you do not need to configure the Universal Connection Pool (UCP) or create separate connection pools for cross-shard statements and single-shard statements. Also, you do not have to check-in or check-out a physical connection for every new sharding key because the sharding data source does it automatically.

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Parent topic: JDBC

JDBC Reactive Extensions

The Reactive Extensions are a set of methods that extend the JDBC standard to offer asynchronous database access with back pressure support. The Reactive Extensions implement the Publisher and Subscriber types defined by java.util.concurrent.Flow. Flow is the JDK's standard representation of a reactive stream.

The Reactive Extensions use non-blocking mechanisms for creating Connections, executing SQL, fetching rows, committing, rolling back, closing Connections, and reading and writing BFILEs, BLOBs, and CLOBs.

The extensions bring scalability, high throughput, and Reactive Streams support to Java applications that use the Oracle Database in the Cloud and on-premises. This extension works as a Service Provider for the Reactive Streams libraries including: Reactor, RxJava, and Akka Streams.

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Parent topic: JDBC

JDBC Support for Native JSON Data Type

This release introduces a new JSON datatype for efficient storage of JSON data. The package oracle.sql.json provides classes and interfaces for working with SQL JSON type values.

This feature furnishes a simpler and richer type system (that is, support for dates, timestamps), no constraint check (IS JSON) and improves the performance of Java applications (that is, faster access to nested JSON values). A JSON parser inside the JDBC driver 21c allows optimizations during the conversion from Java String to native JSON and the other way around.

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Parent topic: JDBC

JSON Document Store

Parent topic: Application Development

New JSON Data Type

JSON is a new SQL and PL/SQL data type for JSON data. It provides a substantial increase in query and update performance.

The JSON data type is optimized for query and DML processing. It can yield significant database performance improvements for processing JSON data.

You can use the JSON data type in most places where a SQL data type is allowed, including:

  • As the column type for table or view DDL
  • With SQL/JSON functions and conditions, and with PL/SQL procedures and functions
  • In Oracle dot-notation query syntax
  • For creation of functional and search indexes

Oracle Call Interface (OCI) and Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) clients now provide APIs that can work directly with binary JSON data, significantly saving network costs and server CPU cycles.

Database In-Memory supports the ability to populate JSON data type columns in the In-Memory column store. JSON data defined with the JSON data type is populated in a proprietary binary format that is optimized for query processing and can significantly improve JSON processing performance.

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Parent topic: JSON Document Store

New Oracle SQL Function JSON_TRANSFORM

You can use SQL function JSON_TRANSFORM to update parts of a JSON document. You specify which parts to modify, the modifications, and any new values.

JSON_TRANSFORM makes it easier for an application to modify a JSON document, without having to parse and rebuild it. In most cases, it also avoids a round-trip between the server and client for the whole document.

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Parent topic: JSON Document Store

SQL/JSON Syntax Improvements

You can now express more complex SQL/JSON queries and express some queries more succinctly.

  • New SQL function JSON_SCALAR accepts a scalar instance of a SQL data type and returns a scalar JSON value as an instance of JSON data type.
  • New JSON path-language item methods support JSON_SCALAR: float(), double(), binary(), ymInterval(), and dsInterval().
  • The JSON path-language and dot-notation syntax support new, aggregate item methods: avg(), count(), minNumber(), maxNumber(), minString(), maxString(), and sum().
  • You can now express more complex SQL/JSON queries and express some queries more succinctly, and SQL/JSON path-expression syntax for array steps is improved.

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Parent topic: JSON Document Store

Multivalue Index for JSON

A new create index syntax CREATE MULTIVALUE INDEX allows you to create a functional index on arrays of strings or numbers within a JSON type column. Each unique value within the array will become a searchable index entry.

This avoids the need for full JSON scans to find values within arrays in JSON columns, when searched using the JSON_EXISTS or JSON_QUERY operators. It provides similar benefits to conventional functional indexes when searching JSON, but conventional functional indexes are limited to a single indexed value per row.

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Parent topic: JSON Document Store

Enhancements to View Creation and of Virtual Columns Addition

DBMS_JSON.CREATE_VIEW now gives you the option to create a materialized view instead of a standard view. It also gives you the option to specify a particular path so the view can be created on a subset of the data. Both CREATE_VIEW and ADD_VIRTUAL_COLUMN are enhanced to allow automatic resolution of column naming conflicts, to provide a prefix to be applied to column names, and to specify the case-sensitivity of column names.

Enhances development flexibility and allows for materialized views, which may improve query performance with a trade-off against DML performance.

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Parent topic: JSON Document Store

JSON Scalar Allowed at Top Level of JSON Document (RFC 8259 Support)

JSON documents in Oracle Database can now have a top-level JSON scalar value. Previously they had to have a JSON object or array value.

This feature helps Oracle JSON support be compliant with RFC 8259.

This feature will only be available when the database initialization parameter compatible is set to 20 or higher.

If the parameter value is at least 20, then JSON data that is stored either textually (VARCHAR2, CLOB, BLOB) or as JSON data type respects RFC 8259: it allows top-level scalars in documents. For a JSON column you can, however, use an IS JSON check constraint with keywords DISALLOW SCALARS to disallow documents having top-level scalar value.

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Parent topic: JSON Document Store

Compatibility for Old Clients With Binary JSON

The database supports JSON in a binary format. In some situations, clients will work directly with the binary format. However, this requires that the client be a recent enough version to understand the format. The database will now identify older clients and automatically transform JSON data from binary to text (serialized) format before transmitting it to them, and convert back from text to binary format as required.

Support for older clients without being forced to upgrade.

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Parent topic: JSON Document Store

Net Services

Parent topic: Application Development

Migration of Oracle CMAN Sessions with High Availability

Client/server sessions can be migrated from one Oracle Connection Manager (CMAN) instance to another Oracle CMAN instance during a planned upgrade or while patching Oracle CMAN. Live sessions can be migrated with data in-transit.

Operations that are running either on a client or on a server continue to run seamlessly during the migration with zero downtime. You can also add new client connections during the migration.

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Parent topic: Net Services

Oracle CMAN Traffic Director Mode Support for All Types of Database Links

Starting with this release, Oracle Connection Manager (CMAN) Traffic Director Mode is extended to support all types of dedicated database links including Fixed User, Connected User, and Current User.

Oracle Connection Manager in Traffic Director Mode enhances application scalability, performance, security, tenant isolation, and high availability (zero downtime during planned and unplanned database outages).

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Parent topic: Net Services

REST APIs for Oracle CMAN Administration, Proxy Protocol, Enhanced Rule List, and Bandwidth Management

You can use REST APIs to manage Oracle Connection Manager (Oracle CMAN) instances. Proxy protocol provides additional security and access control. Enhanced rule list allows scalability with segregation of rule_lists for each service. You can also manage distribution of bandwidth across services using Oracle CMAN.

This feature offers REST API management, security with proxy protocol, scalability with enhanced rule list, and per service bandwidth management.

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Parent topic: Net Services

Reverse Connection Support Using CMAN Tunnels

Starting with Oracle Database 21c, you can use secure tunnels to connect to an Oracle Database instance, which is inside a network that supports only outbound connections.

A network may allow only outbound connections and restrict inbound connections for security reasons. However, using the Oracle Connection Manager tunnel feature, you can connect to a database inside a network that allows only outbound connections. Oracle Connection Manager creates a pool of connections, known as tunnels, that can be used to connect to a database inside the network.

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Parent topic: Net Services

Oracle Call Interface

Parent topic: Application Development

Improvements to OCI Data Interface for LOBs

This feature makes the OCI Data Interface for LOBs more user friendly.

The OCI Data Interface for LOBs is efficient because it reduces the number of round trips between the client and the database. This feature is further improved by removing the need for NULL callbacks and usage of ‘ind’ variable when the LOB length exceeds the sb2 size.

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Parent topic: Oracle Call Interface

New C Client Interface APIs for JSON Data Type

This feature introduces new Oracle Call Interface (OCI) APIs to operate with JSON descriptor. You can read and write textual JSON or binary JSON (in Oracle binary format) from/to a buffer or a stream. You can bind and define a JSON descriptor to write and read JSON data from the database.

With the new JSON APIs, you can now preserve abstraction without a need to serialize the data to text.

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Parent topic: Oracle Call Interface

Oracle Call Interface API to Build and Quote TNS Connection Strings

A new Oracle Call Interface API can now be used to build and quote Oracle Database Transparent Network Substrate (TNS) connection strings.

The Oracle Call Interface enhancement enables validation of values, which you can use for Oracle Net Service connection string attributes.

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Parent topic: Oracle Call Interface

Oracle Call Interface Session Pool Improvements

The Oracle Call Interface Session Pool has been enhanced.

Monitoring and administration has been improved.

When the number of sessions exceeds the minimum pool size, idle session cleanup now occurs even if there is no pool activity.

There is better OCISessionGet wait timeout accuracy.

When using Oracle Sharding, the pool has better balancing of session across shards.

You can now manage Oracle Call Interface Session Pool better with performance, auto-tuning, and administration improvements.

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Parent topic: Oracle Call Interface

Oracle SODA for C and PL/SQL APIs Enhancements

This feature introduces new SODA APIs for saving documents to a collection, truncating a document collection, and specifying the array fetch size to read documents from a collection, which reduces network round-trips.

The enhancements improve interoperability of the SODA APIs with the database and utilities.

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Parent topic: Oracle Call Interface

Support for C99 Syntax in Pro*C/C++ Precompiler

The Pro*C/C++ Precompiler now supports the C99 standard, the ISO/IEC 9899:1999 standards specification for C programming.

C99 syntax and semantics allow application developers to use richer functionality.

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Parent topic: Oracle Call Interface

Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET)

Parent topic: Application Development

Managed ODP.NET and ODP.NET Core: Bulk Copy

ODP.NET Bulk Copy enables applications to efficiently load large amounts of data from a table in one database to another table in a different database. Managed ODP.NET and ODP.NET Core now support Bulk Copy and all its APIs.

ODP.NET Bulk Copy is the most optimized .NET solution when a large data set needs to loaded into a table or between database tables in different databases.

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Parent topic: Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET)

Managed ODP.NET and ODP.NET Core: Debug Tracing Redaction

Managed ODP.NET and ODP.NET Core has introduced a new trace level, that can exclude SQL statements and network packet contents from being included in the trace file.

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Parent topic: Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET)

Managed ODP.NET and ODP.NET Core: WebSocket and WebSocket Secure

Managed ODP.NET and ODP.NET Core now support both WebSocket and WebSocket Secure. Unmanaged ODP.NET already supports these protocols.

WebSocket has the ability to engage in two-way communication simultaneously using a single connection between web application and host unlike HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP). WebSocket Secure uses SSL/TLS to encrypt communications.

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Parent topic: Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET)

PL/SQL

Parent topic: Application Development

DBMS_CLOUD Package

Oracle provides two core mechanisms to work with data in object stores, as part of the new DBMS_CLOUD package or manually defining external tables.

Using DBMS_CLOUD provides benefits and additional functionality that goes beyond DDL and is fully compatible with Oracle Autonomous Database. Oracle strongly recommends leveraging the new DBMS_CLOUD package over manual external table creation.

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Parent topic: PL/SQL

JavaScript Execution using DBMS_MLE

The DBMS_MLE package allows users to execute JavaScript code inside the Oracle Database and exchange data seamlessly between PL/SQL and JavaScript. The JavaScript code itself can execute PL/SQL and SQL through built-in JavaScript modules. JavaScript data types are automatically mapped to Oracle Database data types and vice versa.

With the DBMS_MLE package, developers can write their data processing logic in JavaScript. JavaScript is a widely-used and popular programming language that can now also be used for writing programs that need to execute close to the data.

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Parent topic: PL/SQL

New PL/SQL Iterator Constructs

PL/SQL is enhanced to help you program iteration controls using new iterators in loops and in qualified expressions.

The new iterator constructs are clear, simple, understandable, and efficient.

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Parent topic: PL/SQL

New Pragma SUPPRESSES_WARNING_6009

The SUPPRESSES_WARNING_6009 pragma allows more robust error handling and better encapsulation and modularization.

The PL/SQL compiler issues warning PLW-06009 if it determines that an OTHERS exception handler does not, in all cases, end in either an explicit RAISE statement or in a call to the PL/SQL supplied procedure RAISE_APPLICATION_ERROR. The compiler's behavior is too aggressive for some programming styles when programmers supply their own reporting subroutines. This new pragma quiets the warning.

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Parent topic: PL/SQL

PL/SQL Qualified Expressions Enhancements

Starting with this release, three new types of iterator choice association are added for use in qualified expressions. The basic iterator choice association extends the current iterator choice association by allowing a full iterator as the index. The index iterator choice association provides an index expression along with the value expression. The sequence iterator choice association allows a sequence of values to be added to the end of a collection. In each case, the expressions specified may reference the iterands.

Qualified expressions improve program clarity and programmer productivity.

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Parent topic: PL/SQL

PL/SQL Support For New JSON SQL Data Type

You can use the new JSON SQL data type in PL/SQL.

The new JSON data type allows you to pass JSON data from SQL to PL/SQL and back to SQL (static and dynamic). PL/SQL now supports binding directly JSON data from client side interfaces, such as Oracle Call Interface (OCI) and Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), as well, as from PL/SQL to callouts. JSON can be a differentiating type in overload resolution.

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Parent topic: PL/SQL

PL/SQL Type Attributes in User-Defined Types

You can use attributes of PL/SQL scalar data types, such as BOOLEAN and PLS_INTEGER, in non-persistable object types.

You can use non-persistable object types in your PL/SQL code if you have no desire to persist instances of these types. This is useful when you are developing programs following Oracle's object oriented programming model.

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Parent topic: PL/SQL

SQL

Parent topic: Application Development

Enhanced SQL Set Operators

The SQL set operators now support all keywords as defined in ANSI SQL. The new operator EXCEPT [ALL] is functionally equivalent to MINUS [ALL]. The operators MINUS and INTERSECT now support the keyword ALL.

Full ANSI compliance provides greater compatibility with other database vendors and makes migration to Oracle Database easier than before.

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Parent topic: SQL

Expression Support for Initialization Parameters

You can specify an expression when setting the value of an initialization parameter.

In previous releases, you were required to specify an absolute value when setting an initialization parameter. You can now specify an expression that takes into account the current system configuration and environment. This is especially useful in Oracle Autonomous Database environments.

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Parent topic: SQL

Placeholders in SQL DDL Statements

SQL DDL statements can now contain placeholders instead of hard coded values for some content. For example, placeholders may be used where a username or password are required in a CREATE USER statement. Oracle Call Interface programs can substitute values into the DDL statement placeholders before the statements are sent to Oracle Database. This is similar to data binding, but occurs in Oracle Client.

Application security is improved because values do not need to be hard coded in SQL DDL.

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Parent topic: SQL

SQL Macros

You can create SQL Macros (SQM) to factor out common SQL expressions and statements into reusable, parameterized constructs that can be used in other SQL statements. SQL macros can either be scalar expressions, typically used in SELECT lists, WHERE, GROUP BY and HAVING clauses, to encapsulate calculations and business logic or can be table expressions, typically used in a FROM clause. SQL macros furthermore can improve performance as compared to PL/SQL constructs.

SQL macros increase developer productivity, simplify collaborative development, and improve code quality.

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Parent topic: SQL

Text

Parent topic: Application Development

Custom Range Bucketing in Result Set Interface

You can now specify range buckets for faceted navigation. For example, you can group all items costing between $10 and $20.

Range buckets increase the usability of faceted navigation and avoid the need to manually create range-value sections in the indexed table.

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Parent topic: Text

Facet Navigation Support for JSON Search Indexes

JSON search indexing now supports facet navigation using a JSON result set.

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Parent topic: Text

Improved Index Synchronization and Automatic Index Optimization

Index synchronization performance is considerably improved, particularly when lots of sessions are doing DML operations simultaneously with the sync-on-commit option. Optimize index now optimizes all index entries (including SDATA values) rather than just the word-based index entries.

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Parent topic: Text

In-Memory Full Text Columns

In previous releases, queries using CONTAINS() and JSON_TEXTCONTAINS() were only evaluated with a text index and JSON search index. Oracle Text technology now supports an INMEMORY TEXT clause during table creation, enabling fast in-memory searching rather than creating a separate on-disk text index.

An in-memory table scan can now evaluate columns directly when they are specified as INMEMORY TEXT. Queries using CONTAINS() or JSON_TEXTCONTAINS() can evaluate these operators in SQL predicates without requiring separate domain-specific indexes. When the In-Memory Column Store contains both scalar and non-scalar columns, On-line Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications that access both types of data can avoid accessing the row store, thereby improving performance.

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Parent topic: Text

JSON Support in Result Set Interface

The JSON Result Set Interface (RSI) enables you to perform queries in JSON and return results as JSON.

The RSI enables you to fetch a set of results (a "hitlist") together with summary data such as the total number of hits and facet navigation information. This feature provides easier integration with modern programming languages which support JSON.

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Parent topic: Text

Named Entity Recognition Improvements

Some restrictions have been removed from Named Entity Recognition (previously called Entity Extraction). Entity definitions can now be nested.

You can now incorporate existing or user-defined rules into other rules. For example, you can define rule "percentage change" as one of several words (for example, 'climbed', 'dropped', 'rose', 'increased') followed by the built-in rule for percentage.

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Parent topic: Text

New DIRECTORY_DATASTORE Data Store Type for Oracle Text

You can now use a new data store type called DIRECTORY_DATASTORE instead of the deprecated FILE_DATASTORE type.

DIRECTORY_DATASTORE provides greater security because it enables file access to be based on directory objects.

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Parent topic: Text

New NETWORK_DATASTORE Data Store Type for Oracle Text

You can now use a new data store type called NETWORK_DATASTORE instead of the deprecated URL_DATASTORE data type.

NETWORK_DATASTORE provides greater security because it enables URL access based on access control lists (ACLs), which support HTTP and HTTPS protocols.

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Parent topic: Text

New Oracle Text Index Type: Search Index

The search indexes for text columns support support sharding and all partition types. Index creation syntax is also simpler now.

The search index type maintains most of the features of the traditional CONTEXT index type, but has support for sharding and for multiple partitioning methods (the previous CONTEXT index type can only support range partitioning). It also has a simplified index creation syntax avoiding the semantic complexity necessary for CONTEXT indexes.

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Parent topic: Text