Oracle 10g Database New Features for Developers

• This version of the Oracle Database has been designed to meet two key goals: Reducing the cost of manageability and Delivering increased performance for all key workloads.

• Major new high-availability features are also provided, including new Flashback capabilities (including new Flashback Database and Flashback Table) that reduce the downtime caused by human errors. In addition, support for rolling upgrades has been provided to reduce the downtime associated with database and application upgrades.

• Application development improvements include a new built-in application development environment, support for a high-performance and highly integrated XML capability across the entire technology stack, and a framework provided with the database that enables desktop and middle-tier applications to retrieve and extract data from the database using standard Web Services mechanisms.

• Automatic Storage Management (ASM) automates and simplifies the optimal layout of datafiles, control files, and log files. Database files are automatically distributed across all available disks, and database storage is rebalanced whenever the storage configuration changes.

• Automatic Workload Repository (AWR) is the latest evolution of statspack which provides the central information store for all Oracle 10g self-tuning functionality.

• Rename already existing tablespace. No longer have to create a new tablespace, copy the contents from the old tablespace, and drop the old tablespace.

• Automatic Shared Memory Tuning automates the configuration of System Global Area (SGA) memory-related parameters (buffer cache, shared pool) through self-tuning algorithms.

• SQL Tuning Advisor is a new server tool that eliminates manual tuning of SQL statements as an input and gives advice in the form of precise SQL actions for tuning the SQL along with their expected performance benefit.
• All of the DML statements (INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, MERGE) now have an error logging clause.

• Conditional Compilation: Enables to selectively include code depending on the values of the conditions evaluated during compilation. Also useful when you want to execute debugging procedures in a development environment, but want to turn off in other instances.

• Relaxation of Line Length and Overall Limits for the DBMS_OUTPUT PL/SQL Package

• Rules Manager is a new feature of Oracle Database 10g Release 2. It enables developers to create applications that process and respond to events of any complexity using rules and policies defined in the database.

• Database Change Notification: Receive notification whenever a change occurs in the database on the result set of registered queries. This feature enables any cache or object holding query results to ensure that it contains the very latest data.

• Enhancements in Spatial and Multimedia data management

• New top-level SQL statements have been added to support Automatic Storage Management

• New syntax in ALTER SYSTEM that lets you flushes the buffer cache of the system global area (SGA)

• New syntax in ALTER TABLE that lets you manually compact the table segment, adjust the high water mark, and free the recuperated space

• New category of collection functions lets you manipulate nested tables and varrays like SET,CARDINALITY,POWERMULTISET

• New set of aggregate functions to support statistical analysis of data

• Added hierarchical pseudo columns CONNECT_BY_ISLEAF and CONNECT_BY_ISCYCLE for better usage

• LOB column can be used in UPDATE clause when creating an update DML trigger

• New locale-independent format elements (in particular for Number and Date Formats) have been added to the tables

• New Conditions for nested tables like IS A SET, IS ANY, IS EMPTY, IS PRESENT, MEMBER

• FORALL statement can handle associative arrays and nested tables with deleted elements

• Oracle can issue warnings when you compile subprograms that produce ambiguous results or use inefficient constructs. PLSQL_WARNINGS initialization parameter is controlling this.

• Supports Unicode 4.0

• DBMS_FILE_TRANSFER new API to make binary copies of files on the local server or to transfer files between the local server and remote servers

• MERGE statement enhancement to select rows from one or more sources for update or insertion into a table or view

• Introduces the new IEEE floating-point types BINARY_FLOAT and BINARY_DOUBLE

• UTL_COMPRESS package provides an API to allow compression and decompression of binary data (RAW, BLOB and BFILE)

• UTL_MAIL package provides a simple API to allow email to be sent from PL/SQL. In prior versions this was possible using the UTL_SMTP package, but this required knowledge of the SMTP protocol.

Refer Oracle 10g Database Documents to learn more and to find examles.