vsbabu.org

New Datatypes, New Possibilities

In Part 3 in this series on new features in Oracle 9i, Steven Feuerstein takes a look at some of Oracle’s new datatypes - including XMLTypes - and shows how you can make them work for you.

• Oracle finally supports timezones. However, the database’s timezone is not set by default.
• Use variables of type INTERVAL to store and manipulate deltas between two different dates or timestamps.
• Offers a native XML datatype, SYS.XMLTYPE. With this datatype, Oracle now allows us to perform SQL operations on XML content and XML operations on SQL content. You can also apply standard XML functionality, such as XPath, directly against data without the need to convert to CLOBs or other datatypes. More interestingly, you can create indexes on XML nodes.
• Oracle 9i Release 2 (currently entering beta test) will add significant new features for XML document management, including support for access control lists, foldering, and support for FTP access and WEBDav, HTTP extensions for collaborative editing and management of files on remote Web servers.
• A new datatype, ANY. I’m not sure I like this. Yes, it need not be used most of the time. But like variant in VB, too many newbie programmers might find this an easy way to program. Especially if they like the typical VB way of code-fix-code-fix rather than design-code-test routine.