Lesson 1

The following are the new features in Oracle Net Services in Oracle 12c:

1. Larger Session Data Unit Sizes: Oracle Net supports large session data unit (SDU) sizes, with a new upper limit of 2 MB. The larger SDU size can be used to achieve better utilization of available network bandwidth in networks that have high bandwidth delay products and host resources, according to application characteristics.
2. Advance Network Compression: Advanced Network Compression is another new feature that reduces the amount of data transmitted over the network. New parameters for the sqlnet.ora file enable compression and selection of the preferred compression level. Advance Network Compression is available as part of Advanced Compression Option.
3. Terminated Client Detection: Terminated client detection has been enhanced to reduce the amount of time taken to detect terminated connections. The SQLNET.EXPIRE_TIME parameter must be set in the sqlnet.ora file to detect terminated clients. If the system supports TCP keepalive tuning, then Oracle Net Services automatically uses the enhanced detection model, and tunes the TCP keepalive parameters.
4. Intelligent Client Connection: This feature reduces the priority of connection attempts to unresponsive nodes in the address string of connect descriptor. No configuration changes are required to use this feature.
5. Incident Generation for Process Failures: In case of a process failure, an incident is generated for the following Oracle Net Services components:
   1. Oracle Net Listener
   2. Listener control utility (LSNRCTL)
   3. Connection Manager Administration (CMADMIN)
   4. Oracle Connection Manager gateway (CMGW)
   An incident includes the call stack as well as diagnostic information. Incident generation works with Automatic Diagnostic Repository (ADR) to organize the dump information for critical errors into incidents. If ADR is disabled, then incident generation is also disabled
6. Valid Node Checking for Registration: Oracle Net Listener allows screening of service registration requests from database instances. A database instance is allowed to register services if the instance is running on a valid node. Database administrators specify a list of valid nodes and excluded nodes. The list of valid nodes specifies hosts and subnets from which instances can register services with the listener. The list of excluded nodes specifies hosts and subnets from which instances are not allowed to register services with the listener. The database administrator can also disable valid node checking. By default, valid node checking for registration (VNCR) is enabled, and registration is allowed from instances running on the local host. Subnets or remote hosts need to be configured in the list of valid nodes. This configuration is performed automatically for Single Client Access Name (SCAN) listeners as part of an Oracle Real Application Clusters installation.

This module introduces features of Net Services in Oracle. With each new release, Oracle has improved both the functionality and performance of Oracle Network Services. This course assumes that you already have a basic familiarity with Oracle and Oracle's Net facility. We will concentrate on the new features of Net, the new features to the Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) facility, as well as the new GUI facilities, such as the Net Connection Manager and the connection-pooling feature. When you have completed this course, you should have a firm conceptual grasp of the new features of Network Services Net as they apply to Oracle. We will be taking a close look at new Net security features, increased functionality, Net features for distributed and Oracle Parallel Server databases, and the new features of OEM. While this may seem like an overwhelming amount of material, we will take a step-by-step approach to ensure we explain and illustrate each concept thoroughly. This module simply gives you a quick overview of the main features we will be studying in this course.

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

1. Identify new features of the Net listener
2. Describe Oracle enhancements for scalability
3. Identify the new features for partitioned tables
4. Describe Oracle enhancements and new features that improve connectivity
5. Describe Oracle enhancements that improve manageability of network/database tasks
6. Describe Oracle enhancements that improve and simplify security