Database Reference
In-Depth Information
12cR1: Installations/Upgrades—Running Scripts Automatically
With RAC 12cR1, scripts can be set up to run automatically at the tail-end of installations and upgrades, making the
whole process easier and minimizing the need for human intervention, thereby mitigating overall errors as well using
this methodology.
12cR1: Introducing Application Continuity
With 12cR1, application availability and continuity have been significantly enhanced by masking planned and
unplanned outages and failures (network, storage, processes, etc.) from application users.
This new feature has been implemented in a manner that is independent of the way the application behaves and
operates in case of a failure in RAC.
Application continuity can be implemented at the database service level by the following steps:
Setting the -failovertype parameter to TRANSACTION.
Setting the -commit_outcome parameter to TRUE.
Application continuity is transparently available to applications using Oracle connection pools (UCP), Weblogic
Server Active GridLink, and JDBC.
The next section is an extension and continuation of the application continuity paradigm and functionality.
Transaction Idempotence and Java Transaction Guard
Transaction idempotence is an exciting new feature that enhances the RAC experience by enabling application
recovery by masking most of the RAC system-level failures from the user. Java Transaction Guard allows Java to use
application continuity features.
Deprecated and Desupported Features
In this section, features and options are listed that are either deprecated or not supported with 12cR1. It is very
important to understand these points before you plan to upgrade your existing environment and/or plan a new 12c
cluster environment. The deprecated, desupported features include the following:
•
Raw (block) storage devices are no longer supported by Oracle with 12c. Therefore, consider
migrating the OCR/voting disk to ASM if they are on raw storage devices and if you have plans
to upgrade your existing environment to 12c.
•
Oracle no longer supports the Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS) on the Windows OS family.
•
Single-letter commands for the SRVCTL utility, for example, -n -s, have been desupported.
Summary
With a whole array of exciting new features ranging from Flex Clusters, Flex ASM, What-if command Evaluation, and
RAC-based PDBs to Application Continuity, 12cR1 brings about real change and enhancements to the overall RAC
experience. These new features reflect changing times in the industry and the evolution of Cloud Computing within
the IT ecosystem. Most of the new features related to RAC 12cR1 reflect the significance of the role that RAC plays
within the Cloud Computing space from a Database-as-a-service (DBAAS) model perspective.
