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 new features for Oracle Multimedia, and new enhancements for Oracle Multimedia DICOM. The following subsections list these features and enhancements.

See Oracle Multimedia Reference for more information about the Oracle Multimedia features. See Oracle Multimedia DICOM Developer's Guide for more information about the DICOM enhancements.

Oracle Multimedia Features

The following new features for Oracle Multimedia are described in Oracle Multimedia Reference:

• New constructor functions for BLOBs and other sources, for these object types:

  • ORDAudio

  • ORDDoc

  • ORDImage

  • ORDVideo

• Support for image watermarking

• New image processing operators:

  • nometadata

  • sharpen

  • transparencyFillColor

• Support for the CMYK content format

Oracle Multimedia DICOM Enhancements

The following enhancements for Oracle Multimedia DICOM are described in Oracle Multimedia DICOM Developer's Guide:

• Recursive calls within constraint definitions

• Limiting the list of DICOM attributes for extraction

• Oracle Multimedia Mid-Tier Java API

• DICOM value locator type syntax

• Wildcard character syntax

• New preference parameters to define run-time behavior:

  • BINARY_SKIP_INVALID_ATTR

  • MANDATE_ATTR_TAGS_IN_STL

  • MAX_RECURSION_DEPTH

  • SPECIFIC_CHARACTER_SET

  • SQ_WRITE_LEN

• DICOM to AVI conversion

• DEFLATE compression format

• RLE compression format

• YBR photometric interpretation

• Encoding of multibit monochrome raw content

• Oracle Data Pump Utilities support for the DICOM data model repository

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 1.6.4 for more information about the status of this feature and its enhancements.