What's New in Oracle Database for Windows

This section describes new features of Oracle Database and provides pointers to additional information. New features information from previous releases is also retained to help those users migrating to the current release.

The following sections describe new features:

• Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Support

• Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2) New Features

• Oracle Database 10g Release 1 (10.1) New Features

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 Support

Starting with release 10.2.0.4, Oracle Database and Client are supported on Microsoft Windows Vista (x64) and Windows Server 2008 (x64).

Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2) New Features

Starting with release 10.2.0.5, Oracle Database and Client are supported on Microsoft Windows 7 (x64) and Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64).

Oracle Database 10g Release 1 (10.1) New Features

This section contains these topics:

• Large Page Support

• Scheduler

• Database Password Encryption

• Data Pump Import and Export

• Oracle Database Client Features

• Desupported Features

Large Page Support

Large page support provides a performance boost for memory-intensive database servers running on Windows Server 2003. By taking advantage of newly introduced operating system support, Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2) can now make more efficient use of processor memory addressing resources.

Scheduler

This release includes a new database scheduler to provide enterprise scheduling functionality. External jobs performed by the user are started using the OracleJobScheduler service. This service is disabled by default. In order to use the external jobs functionality, the administrator must set the username and password for the user account under which this service must run, and enable the service.

Restricting execution of external jobs to a low-privileged user prevents any random database user from gaining operating system level privileges, but it also places restrictions on the kinds of jobs that can be run. Jobs requiring a higher level of operating system privileges cannot be run by this mechanism.

On Windows, running an external job involves the following processes:

• Job slave process (one for each job)

• extjob service (one service, with one thread for each job)

• The actual external executable or job (one for each external job)

Database Password Encryption

When a user attempts a remote login to Oracle Database, the password is automatically encrypted before it is sent to the remote database. For more information, see "Automatically Encrypted Database Passwords".

Data Pump Import and Export

Two new utilities offer faster transfer of files to and from Oracle Database. The older file transfer utilities, Import and Export, are retained for use with databases created with earlier versions of Oracle software. For more information about Data Pump Import and Export, see Chapter 2, "Database Tools on Windows".

Oracle Database Client Features

Oracle Enterprise Manager Console is available only with Oracle Database Client.

Desupported Features

Migration Utility is not supported in Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2). Pro*C/C++ is supported in Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2), but the graphical user interface to Pro*C/C++ is not.