Solutions for Relational Databases: Oracle

Progress Energy is reaping the runtime benefits of DataDirect technology. This leading energy supplier in the southeast U.S. relies on DataDirect ODBC drivers for fast and risk-free access to Oracle databases from over 3,000 desktops.

Companies like Progress Energy have found that the products they choose for accessing Oracle or processing Oracle data for use in XML applications can have a significant economic and technical impact on an application throughout its life cycle. Following are the key results you can expect from choosing DataDirect for your Oracle applications and why.

Save Time and Money in Development

DataDirect’s support for Oracle can dramatically speed the development process by employing a consistent, reliable means of data connectivity through the ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET standard APIs. In addition, if you need to query Oracle data for use in XML applications, we offer DataDirect XQuery - an implementation of the W3C XQuery standard that helps you develop applications that deal with XML faster. With DataDirect, developers spend less time on managing data connectivity and integration issues and more time on the application’s business logic and user requirements. The reasons for this are:

• No Oracle client libraries required - DataDirect products for Oracle provide direct communication between the application and the database, eliminating the need for Oracle client libraries, and thereby eliminating the pain and costs associated with developing and testing your application with multiple versions of the Oracle clients.
• Support for multiple versions of Oracle from a single driver - DataDirect supports all Oracle versions with a single component (including Oracle 8i, 9i, and 10g). This is especially significant if you have applications that need to support multiple versions of the Oracle database or if you have large deployments of Oracle client libraries. DataDirect products do not require Oracle client libraries. By contrast, other vendors require multiple drivers for each Oracle database version and may also require multiple versions of the Oracle database client libraries.
• Strict adherence to open standards – DataDirect’s commitment to interoperability and complete compliance with industry standards ensures no adoption of proprietary extensions. This means that your developers won’t have to keep up with proprietary changes in the underlying data connectivity layer or XQuery tools, and allows us to offer database-independent support for such features as stored procedure escape syntax, date/time escape syntax, connection failover, database load balancing and NCHAR support. This true cross-database interoperability also lowers development costs for organizations with applications that need to access more than one corporate database such as DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, or Sybase.
• Common architecture – All DataDirect products share a common architecture that makes it easy for developers to update code when the underlying database is changed or upgraded. If your applications require access to databases other than Oracle, this can be an important feature. A common architecture enables more code reuse because our products abstract the differences between various corporate databases. In addition, all DataDirect products offer SQL leveling─the ability to write a SQL statement that can be executed across multiple databases or database versions.
• Advanced feature support – In addition to supporting all the important Oracle features such as Oracle RAC, CLOBs, BLOBs, and other data types, DataDirect supports database-independent features such as stored procedure escape syntax, distributed transaction support, connection failover, and database load balancing. Other Oracle drivers that are missing advanced features such as these force developers to compensate by spending time coding workarounds or deploying applications with missing functionality. Lack of support for these features can also adversely affect application reliability and performance.
• Support for processing XML and Oracle data – DataDirect’s XQuery product helps you get XML projects done faster because it doesn’t require any servers or additional software like other XQuery implementations on the market. Because DataDirect XQuery resides in the middle tier, along with your application, your XQueries and application are insulated from any changes to the Oracle database or other underlying software.

Simplify and Reduce Costs in Deployment

DataDirect components can save your organization a significant amount of time and money in the process of planning, executing, and debugging Oracle applications for these reasons:

• Avoid deployment problems due to Oracle client libraries - DataDirect components do not require the use of Oracle client libraries, which can create a variety of deployment problems because of file size and lack of compatibility across multiple database versions. Each time an application is deployed or upgraded, developers can spend hours or days configuring and debugging problems related to the Oracle client libraries.
• Application upgrades and enhancements – When applications need to be migrated to the latest version of Oracle, developers can simply use DataDirect to call the data source, instead of learning the particulars of the new data source. Development effort can be focused on new application or enhancement requirements instead of new database connectivity issues.
• Support for all major platforms and application server environments – DataDirect supports connectivity to Oracle in heterogeneous corporate environments. For example, for ODBC applications, we support Windows, Linux, and UNIX platforms.
• Fully backwards-compatible – DataDirect’s Oracle components are fully backwards-compatible with previous releases of the database so you can readily support different database versions without having to install and test an additional driver.
• Reduced maintenance for Oracle-XML applications – Our XQuery product adheres completely to the W3C XQuery Standard, whereas other XQuery tools use proprietary extensions, requiring additional coding and re-coding of XQueries every time a new version of the tool is released.

At Runtime: Improve Application Performance, Scalability and Reliability

Using DataDirect components in your Oracle applications can reduce system downtime and results in faster, more reliable interactions with employees, customers, and partners. Here is why:

• Consistent high performance data connectivity – Direct access to Oracle databases through our clientless architecture improves application response time in some cases by as much as 500 percent. In fact, for ODBC, applications using DataDirect drivers were proven even faster than applications built to use Oracle’s own proprietary (native) API. In addition, DataDirect components are optimized for maximum performance within a range of scenarios, especially for applications that are read intensive ─ for both single-threaded and multi-threaded connections. Our products also come with a Performance Tuning Wizard (for ODBC, JDBC, and ADO.NET) that allows you to fine-tune your environment to increase performance and decrease network traffic. Support for advanced features such as connection pooling also positively impact Oracle application performance.
• Faster execution time for Oracle XQueries – Special optimization and mediation features enable our XQuery product to dramatically outperform other tools or hand-coded applications, resulting in the best possible XQuery performance.
• Improved scalability - Multi-threaded scalability tests ensure DataDirect products for Oracle make the most efficient use of network traffic, disk I/O, and memory. In addition, our XQuery product employs XML streaming, which drastically reduces the amount of memory required when processing large XML documents.
• Tested for stability – The quality of our products is verified through a stringent test process, including tests for standards compliance and thousands of tasks representing load-intensive production environments. In addition, our XQuery product provides stability for developers through our standards-based XQuery and XQJ (XQuery for Java) implementations. DataDirect XQuery passes the XML Query Test Suite (XQTS) with 99+% compliancy.

Data access and XML processing can be complicated. That’s why it’s also important to ensure your product for Oracle is backed by knowledgeable and responsive customer support professionals. At DataDirect, we offer 24-hour technical support, including phone, web, email, forum, and fax support. Our knowledgebase is the largest in the industry with over 2500 documents.

To learn more about the economic and technical benefits of choosing DataDirect for your Oracle applications, read the Nucleus Research report, ROI Evaluation Report of DataDirect’s Data Connectivity Products.

To speak with an expert about DataDirect products for Oracle, please call 1-800-876-3101 or submit a Request for Information form and an account executive will contact you.