What's New in Oracle Multimedia?

This document summarizes new features, enhancements, APIs, and Oracle Database support introduced with Oracle Multimedia in the current release. It also describes a feature that is no longer being enhanced, beginning with the current release.

New Features for Release 11.2

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2) added the following new features, which are described in this manual.

New Constructor Functions

Oracle Multimedia now provides new constructor functions for BLOBs and other sources for these object types:

• ORDAudio

  See ORDAudio Constructors for complete reference information about these ORDAudio constructor functions: ORDAudio for BLOBS and ORDAudio for Other Sources.

• ORDDoc

  See ORDDoc Constructors for complete reference information about these ORDDoc constructor functions: ORDDoc for BLOBS and ORDDoc for Other Sources.

• ORDImage

  See ORDImage Constructors for complete reference information about these ORDImage constructor functions: ORDImage for BLOBS and ORDImage for Other Sources.

• ORDVideo

  See ORDVideo Constructors for complete reference information about these ORDVideo constructor functions: ORDVideo for BLOBS and ORDVideo for Other Sources.

As a result, the following init( ) methods were not enhanced in Oracle Database 11g, Release 2 (11.2):

• init( ) for ORDAudio

• init( ) for ORDDoc

• init( ) for ORDImage

• init( ) for ORDVideo

• init(srcType,srcLocation,srcName) for ORDAudio

• init(srcType,srcLocation,srcName) for ORDDoc

• init(srcType,srcLocation,srcName) for ORDImage

• init(srcType,srcLocation,srcName) for ORDVideo

Image Watermarking

Oracle Multimedia now supports adding watermarks that contain images or text to source images, thus preventing the misuse of copyrighted or trademarked images. See Section D.6 for more information about this feature.

New Image Processing Operators

Oracle Multimedia now provides these new image processing operators:

• nometadata

  Use the nometadata operator to process an image without encoding its image metadata in the resulting image. See Section D.3.6 for more information about this operator.

• sharpen

  Use the sharpen operator to improve the sharpness of an image. See Section D.3.11 for more information about this operator.

• transparencyFillColor

  Use the transparencyFillcolor operator to fill the transparent regions of PNG image file formats with color. See Section D.3.13 for more information about this operator.

CMYK Content Format

Oracle Multimedia now supports the CMYK content format. See Section D.5 for more information about this feature.

Status of ORDImage Support for DICOM in Release 11.2

Beginning with Oracle Database 11g, Release 2 (11.2), the DICOM support in ORDImage objects that was introduced in Oracle Database 10g, Release 2 (10.2) was not enhanced. The DICOM support in ORDImage objects is still available in Release 11.2, but Oracle recommends taking the following actions for medical imaging applications.

• For new applications:

  Use the new DICOM support that was introduced in Oracle Database 11g, Release 1 (11.1).

• For existing applications that use the DICOM support in ORDImage objects:

  Migrate to the new DICOM support that was introduced in Release 11.1.

See Section J.3 for more information about the status of this feature and its enhancements.