DataDirect ODBC Drivers for Oracle

DataDirect Technologies offers the most reliable and advanced 32-bit and 64-bit ODBC drivers for the Oracle database every major platform including UNIX, Linux, and Windows. Whether you are an architect looking to reduce the total cost of ownership of an ODBC application connecting to Oracle or a developer looking for the best-performing ODBC driver for Oracle, DataDirect has exactly what you need.
Both the 32-bit and 64-bit DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle are designed using innovative wire protocol technology. Wire protocol architecture is what allows DataDirect's drivers for Oracle to simultaneously support connections to Oracle versions 8i, 9i, and 10g as well as offer the following benefits to ODBC applications of all types:

  • Simplified development
  • Reduced deployment costs
  • Maximum uptime and runtime performance

To read more about the advantages of choosing DataDirect's ODBC drivers for Oracle, read the materials below and follow the related links for deeper technical information.

DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle - Topics:

When you are ready to evaluate DataDirect's ODBC drivers for Oracle with your application, download a driver package or contact us if you would like assistance in evaluating.

Why Choose DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle?

No need to deploy the Oracle NET client libraries
Configuring and supporting the Oracle NET client libraries across the entire enterprise, along with various dependencies imposed by some ODBC drivers, can be a huge support burden. DataDirect Technologies' ODBC drivers for Oracle use wire protocol technology, meaning that that they connect to Oracle servers without the need for any Oracle client libraries.

IMPORTANCE: Use of wire protocol drivers removes the dependencies on any other software and greatly lessens the time and cost to deploy applications and reduces the support cost of maintaining applications that need access to Oracle.

ODBC-Oracle
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Best ODBC driver performance for any production scenario

DataDirect Technologies' ODBC drivers for Oracle are optimized to communicate directly and efficiently with Oracle servers using the Oracle server wire protocol. Benchmarks on the DataDirect web site demonstrate up to 500% performance gains over traditional Oracle client-based drivers. Additionally, DataDirect offers a Performance Wizard to help organizations tune their DataDirect ODBC drivers for any application architecture and network topology.

IMPORTANCE: Organizations want the fastest possible access to their Oracle databases. ODBC drivers that use Oracle client libraries are limited by the performance features that are available in the Oracle Call Interface (OCI). Wire protocol drivers communicate directly to the Oracle server and can leverage any performance optimizations the server exposes, potentially even optimizations that cannot be exposed through the OCI.

Quality and Reliability
The ability to consistently perform well in any set of circumstances defines the quality of DataDirect ODBC drivers. All DataDirect ODBC drivers are thoroughly tested to ensure that no matter what application environment and architecture you use, the ODBC drivers will work. DataDirect tests its ODBC drivers using the largest, most mature ODBC testing infrastructure in existence, the DataDirect ODBC Verification Suite (OVS). The OVS runs millions of test cases against each DataDirect ODBC drivers across all major client operating systems, including UNIX and Linux. This rigorous testing process is designed to guarantee that there will be no unpleasant surprises when the driver is rolled out into production. In addition, DataDirect has extensive third-party test suites developed by DataDirect Technologies in conjunction with 300+ OEMs that ensure that all DataDirect ODBC drivers are compatible with all major database applications available.

IMPORTANCE: Investing in a driver that is highly tested and certified with a wide variety of applications available across the industry protects an organization against unnecessary and crippling downtime, vendor application lock-in, and increased support and maintenance costs.

Technical Support
DataDirect Technologies' total focus is on data access middleware. With an approach that is one of partnership with each customer and with all DBMS vendors, DataDirect Technologies offers robust, worldwide-support through phone, interactive web, email, and fax. DataDirect has the largest knowledgebase in the industry on ODBC, applications, and middleware. SupportLink, DataDirect's support organization, has received a 95% approval rating for 5 years running from its customers and is one of the main reasons why DataDirect data connectivity technology has become the industry standard, relied on by millions of users and 300+ OEMs.

IMPORTANCE: The TCO is generally not in the initial acquisition cost of the software. It is in the support, administration, and incurred downtime costs inherent with network architectures. Superior technical support is essential to reducing these costs, allowing applications and the businesses that depend on them to run uninterrupted.

Competitive Advantage Matrix for ODBC to Oracle
See the competitive advantage matrix which compares the performance and reliability advantages of using DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle versus an ODBC driver from Oracle.

Specific Features for Oracle

DataDirect's ODBC drivers for Oracle offer the most extensive technical feature set of any ODBC driver available for Oracle 8i, 9i and 10g. When considered against Oracle's ODBC driver, the relevant differences demonstrate a compelling set of reasons for migrating to DataDirect's wire protocol architecture ODBC drivers.

For further technical reading on specific topics, review the following links:

Connection Failover and Client-Side Load Balancing
The DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle provide Connection Failover and client-side Load Balancing.
IMPORTANCE: Connection Failover allows the driver to try to connect to alternate servers when the primary server connection is unavailable. Load Balancing means that these connection attempts will be random, thereby not overloading the primary server. These features ensure that access to your critical data will not be impeded by the failure of a particular server.

Unicode Support
The DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle fully support multiple Unicode encodings and most non-English character sets across all operating system platforms.

IMPORTANCE: The support for Unicode is in response to the needs of multi-national organizations requiring the use of international character sets from a single application.

Interoperability
The DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle enable applications to access multiple databases with fewer lines of code and less maintenance, ensuring consistent functionality and performance, regardless of the database.

DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle include interoperability features such as a common code base across all DataDirect ODBC drivers; standard escape syntax for stored procedures, outer joins, scalar functions, and date, time and timestamps. Additional functionality includes standardized stored procedure execution and result set handling, and standard handling of empty strings and NULLs.

By contrast, Oracle's ODBC driver is specific individual Oracle databases and versions, which means that interoperability is not provided across the entire Oracle product line, let alone support for other databases such as SQL Server, DB2, Sybase and Informix.

IMPORTANCE: Almost every organization has multiple databases or multiple versions of Oracle that applications may have to access. Use of the DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle allows developers to create application code that is truly independent of the database and database version that it was originally developed with.

ODBC 3.52 Specification Support
The DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle fully support the ODBC 3.52 specification, thereby providing maximum flexibility and utility.

IMPORTANCE: The DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle are the only ones that fully support the ODBC 3.52 specification. DataDirect Technologies is the recognized industry leader for providing stable, scalable, and reliable connectivity to Oracle. DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle are installed and used in production environments around the globe and are shipped in numerous applications because of the breadth of their specification support.

Oracle Stored Procedures (PL/SQL) Returning Result Sets
The DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle fully support returning result sets (including multiple result sets) generated from PL/SQL stored procedures against 7, 8, 8i, 9i, and 10g servers. This implementation is:

  • Standards-based execution of Oracle stored procedures. Returning a result set is done the same way it would be done for other databases, such as Informix or Sybase, and the way it would be expected by any third-party application.
  • Fully-functional business logic written in PL/SQL is not limited to a single result set. Multiple result sets can be returned from a single invocation, which allows the greatest application flexibility and performance.

IMPORTANCE: Organizations want to leverage PL/SQL to place optimized business logic on the server. This feature provides maximum performance and functionality using well-tuned PL/SQL routines. Using ODBC-compliant syntax ensures application flexibility and interoperability. Investing in high quality, fully functional ODBC products for Oracle ensures that an organization can leverage the functionality of their Oracle investments and save the long-term cost of redeployment of a solution.

Cursor Support
The DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle optimize forward-only cursors to pre-fetch multiple records, reducing network traffic and improving performance. Two types of scrollable cursors are supported to allow maximum application flexibility:

  • Static cursors are ideal for applications that require high levels of concurrency on the database server and require the ability to scroll forwards and backwards through result sets. DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle fully implement the static cursor model and provide options to fine-tune static cursor performance (for example, options allowing you to set how much long textual data is cached).
  • Keyset-driven cursors are the preferred scrollable cursor model when the application cannot afford to buffer the data from a static cursor. DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle implement a robust keyset-cursor model that works well with dynamic enterprise applications.

IMPORTANCE: Forward-only cursors allow only one pass through the data, which can severely limit application flexibility. Static scrollable cursors provide application flexibility, but they must be used judiciously because of performance issues when caching large amounts of data. Keyset-driven scrollable cursors provide the most application flexibility and are very important in building enterprise-level applications.

Microsoft DTC Support
The DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle leverage the facilities of the Microsoft DTC environment in a user-friendly and flexible manner. No separate installation packages are required and DTC is supported "straight out of the box" against multiple versions of the Oracle8i, Oracle9i, and Oracle 10g server platforms. The drivers provide flexible recognition features that detect Oracle8i, Oracle9i, and Oracle 10g settings to allow for maximum performance and throughput in any Microsoft Transaction Server/DTC environment.

IMPORTANCE: Enterprise applications running in the Windows NT/2000/XP/Server 2003 environment will probably use Microsoft Transaction Server and its DTC capabilities. It is essential that those DTC capabilities be exposed fully and in a manner that provides for administration and deployment flexibility within the enterprise.

XML Persistence
The DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle fully support XML persistence.

IMPORTANCE: DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle include functionality that enables retrieval of result sets from an Oracle relational database and stores the result sets as XML data files. The benefit is that a company can quickly publish information to the Web and allow customers to interact with the data it publishes. DataDirect offers the only ODBC drivers on the market that provide this functionality.

Additional Oracle Features

  • Support for Oracle data types: CLOB, BLOB, BFILE, Timestamp, Timestamp with Local Time Zone, Timestamp with Time Zone (all Timestamp data types are supported in Oracle 9i or higher only), NChar, NVarchar, NClob, and ROWID
  • Supports Oracle 10g Binary Float and Binary Double Data types
  • Supports Oracle RAC
  • Ability to execute PL/SQL upon connection
  • TNSNAMES.ORA Support
  • Support for multiple TNSNAMES.ORA files for failover purposes
  • Supports the ability to execute a single SQL statement using multiple rows of values
  • Tuning options to control the amount of data that is returned across the network on single roundtrips from the Oracle server

Performance and Scalability

Best ODBC performance for any production scenario
DataDirect Technologies' ODBC drivers for Oracle are optimized to communicate directly and efficiently with Oracle servers using the Oracle server wire protocol. Benchmarks on the DataDirect web site demonstrate significant performance gains over traditional Oracle client-based drivers in both single-thread (single user) and multi-threaded (multiple user) situations. Additionally, DataDirect offers a Performance Wizard to help organizations tune their DataDirect ODBC drivers for any application architecture and network topology.

IMPORTANCE: Organizations want the fastest possible access to their Oracle databases and should expect consistent performance as additional applications or application users are added. ODBC drivers that use Oracle client libraries are limited by the performance features that are available in the Oracle Call Interface (OCI) and cause severe application performance bottlenecks. DataDirect wire protocol ODBC drivers for Oracle communicate directly with the Oracle server and can therefore avoid the technical issues in the Oracle client libraries which limit ODBC application performance. In addition, wire protocol ODBC drivers leverage any performance optimizations the server exposes, potentially even optimizations that cannot be exposed through the Oracle client libraries.

Advanced Security Features

Operating System (OS) Authentication (aka Single Sign-On/Kerberos)

DataDirect Oracle Wire Protocol drivers support OS authentication via Kerberos. OS authentication can be used to provide single sign-on capability, integrating the authentication of users for an application with database authentication.

Organizations can create a single sign-on environment that bolsters security, eliminates the need for users to log in separately for each application, and reduces the costs associated with managing user accounts.

The following authentication features are supported:

  • Extensive client support – Kerberos authentication is supported for application clients running on UNIX, Linux, and Windows.
  • Comprehensive KDC support – Support for both Active Directory and MIT Key Distribution Centers (KDC).

Support for SSL Data Encryption

SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is an industry-standard protocol for sending encrypted data over database connections. SSL secures the integrity of your data by encrypting information and providing client/server authentication. DataDirect Oracle wire protocol drivers support SSL to protect data that is transmitted between the database and the application, data that could otherwise be compromised.

Oracle Database Versions Supported

A single DataDirect ODBC driver for Oracle fully supports simultaneous connections to all of the following Oracle database versions:

  • Oracle 8i R2 (8.1.6, 8.1.7)
  • Oracle 9i R1 R2 (9.01, 9.2)
  • Oracle 10g R1, R2 (10.1, 10.2)
  • Oracle 11g

DataDirect is the only vendor that provides a single ODBC driver for all Oracle database versions. Oracle requires multiple ODBC drivers as well as multiple versions of the Oracle client libraries (given their architectural design) in order to support all of these versions of the Oracle database.

IMPORTANCE: Oracle client libraries pose a significant headache for organizations that wish to deploy multiple database applications to the same platform. New applications are usually built to take advantage of the functionality of the latest Oracle database version and consequently require the latest version of the Oracle client libraries. When the time comes to deploy these new applications, the database client libraries must be upgraded on each platform where the application is deployed and all existing applications on the platform must be retested with the latest version. Because DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle do not require the Oracle client libraries and can support simultaneous connections to multiple versions of Oracle, costs of deploying and testing applications against multiple versions of Oracle are significantly reduced.

Application Platforms and Processor Architectures Supported

The DataDirect ODBC drivers for Oracle are available on every major platform – Linux, UNIX, and Windows – for a wide variety of 32-bit and 64-bit processor architectures including Intel Itanium and AMD / Intel x64. DataDirect's broad platform coverage for ODBC applications seeking to connect with the Oracle database is matched by no other vendor (including Oracle!).

For the latest information on the client platforms, platform versions, and processor architectures supported by DataDirect's ODBC drivers for Oracle, please see the support matrices at the links below:

32-bit ODBC drivers - Connect for ODBC
64-bit ODBC drivers - Connect64 for ODBC