Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise. An Oracle White Paper August 2005

Transcription

1 Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise An Oracle White Paper August 2005

2 Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Introduction... 3 Oracle Application Server 10g release 3 (10.1.3) Data Access Features... 3 Simplified data source classification for ease-of-development... 3 Scalable connection caching... 4 High-availability with integrated RAC failover support... 6 Comprehensive JDBC and datatype support... 7 Dynamic reconfiguration via JMX for manageability... 8 Advanced transaction management for guarded data integrity... 9 Best Data Access Support for Oracle Databases Broadest, Most Flexible, Up-to-date Support for Oracle Data Access Features Oracle Database 10g JDBC Overview Oracle Database Web Services Overview Oracle TopLink Overview Implicit Connection Caching Fast Connection Failover Oracle Database Security - Proxy-authentication and Virtual Private Database (VPD) End-to-End Tracing SUMMARY Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 2

3 Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise INTRODUCTION Enterprise data access is an indispensable part of almost every mission-critical business application. Today s Java applications and Web Services are calling for data access performance, availability, ease-of-use, and security at an unprecedented level. Leveraging innovative features in Oracle Database 10g, Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) brings comprehensive data access support for today s agile enterprises. Integrated Implicit Connection Caching provides scalable and superfast connection virtualization; Fast Connection Failover works with Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) to achieve high availability; simple data source classification with dynamic reconfiguration capability via JMX offers great ease-ofuse and manageability; advanced transaction management features work together to guarantee data integrity and consistency. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) data access is not only feature-rich, but also provides the best integrated support for Oracle databases, allowing applications and developers to fully take advantage of the unparalleled performance, availability, ease-of-development, manageability, and security features in Oracle databases. This white paper provides a technical overview of Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) s data access features, and details how Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) provides the industry s best support for Oracle databases among all the application servers. ORACLE APPLICATION SERVER 10G RELEASE 3 (10.1.3) DATA ACCESS FEATURES Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) brings comprehensive data access support for today s agile enterprises: from connection caching to fast failover, from simple-and-clean configuration to dynamic reconfiguration, from complete standard and datatype support to advanced transaction management. Simplified data source classification for ease-of-development Data sources encapsulate connectivity to resource managers including databases, functioning as the front door to any data access capability. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) offers a clean and simple data source classification, Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 3

4 providing great ease-of-development and enhanced usability. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) now supports two types of data sources: managed data source and native data source, replacing the old data source types like non-emulated data source and emulated data source. Managed data sources are data sources that are managed by Oracle Application Server Container for J2EE (OC4J). Specifically, a managed data source is an OC4J-provided implementation of the java.sql.datasource interface that acts as a wrapper to a JDBC driver or data source. J2EE components access managed data sources via JNDI with no knowledge that the data source implementation is a wrapper. OC4J provides critical system infrastructure, such as global transaction management, connection caching, dynamic configuration via JMX, and error handling, for managed data sources. Native data sources also implement the java.sql.datasource interface, and are provided by JDBC-driver vendors such as Oracle and Merant. Native data sources are not wrapped by OC4J at all. Key differences between managed and native data sources are shown in the following table: Can the connections retrieved from a data source participate in global transactions Can a data source make use of OC4J s connection pool and statement caches Is a connection returned from a data source wrapped with an OC4J Connection Proxy Managed Data Source Yes Yes Yes Native Data Source No No No Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) supports the migration from old data source types to the new types. Users and applications have the option of either converting the data sources on the fly during runtime, or explicitly generating data source configuration files that contain the new data source definitions. Scalable connection caching One of the most time-consuming operations in J2EE applications is establishing a connection to the database. Connection caching improves performance and scalability by allowing multiple clients to share a small number of physical connections. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) integrates the new Implicit Connection Caching features in Oracle Database 10g JDBC, minimizing Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 4

5 database access time while allowing transparent access to rich cache management functions. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) data sources transparently and centrally manage connection caches. It utilizes the Connection Cache Manager for both cache management and binding connection caches to data sources. There is a single instance of Connection Cache Manager per Java Virtual Memory (JVM), managing all connection caches located within that JVM. This instance of the Connection Cache Manager is usually obtained transparently in the data sources before any of the connection caching functionality is used. Besides central cache management, the Implicit Connection Cache provides a rich set of features including: transparent or implicit access to the connection cache, support for heterogeneous authenticated connection, the ability to refresh or recycle stale connections from the cache, connection retrieval based on user defined attributes (connection striping), and connection retrieval based on user defined weights. Define or Leave Empty to Enable or Disable Connection Caching The primary tool for configuring Implicit Connection Caching in Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) data sources is the user-friendly Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) 10g Application Server Control Console. Central management of the data sources via the Console significantly lowers administrative cost. Standard JMX-based management supports the dynamic creation, deletion, and modification of both data source types, as well as the associated connection caches, without application server restart. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 5

6 Alternatively, Implicit Connection Caching can be enabled or disabled declaratively within the data-sources.xml configuration file for any Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) data source. This is detailed in a companion article on configuring connection caching in Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3): rces/oc4j_ds.htm <connection-pool name="myconnectionpool"> <connection-factory factory-class="oracle.jdbc.pool.oracledatasource" user="scott" password="tiger" url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@//dbhost:1521/oracle"> </connection-factory> </connection-pool> <managed-data-source jndi-name="jdbc/managedds" description="managed DataSource"> connection-pool-name="myconnectionpool"/> Add or Remove this Attribute to Enable or Disable Connection Caching We will look into Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) connection caching in more detail in the second half of this paper. High-availability with integrated RAC failover support In multi-tier applications with databases and application server middle tiers, detection of failures and propagation of failure events to tiers that dispatch requests is critical for end-to-end failover. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) data sources integrate Oracle Database 10g JDBC s Fast Connection Failover support for Oracle databases. It provides the ability to failover connections in the connection cache as quickly and efficiently as the database itself, which is achieved by listening to the Oracle Database 10g Real Application Clusters (RAC) UP/DOWN failover events generated by the database. Fast Connection Failover works in conjunction with the Implicit Connection Caching mechanism and a RAC database. When a connection cache is setup for a multi-instance RAC database, database connections may end up on any of the RAC instances, as distributed by the database listener. When an instance goes down, due to an instance or host failure, it brings down all the connections with it. For example, in a two node, two instance RAC cluster, each of the instances has 50 connections each, for a connection cache primed up to 100 connections in the cache. If one of the RAC instances goes down, there would instantly be 50 bad connections in the cache. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 6

7 This could potentially result in multiple bad connections being returned from the cache, which in turn could result in application or browser page errors. The Fast Connection Failover support enables an automatic detect-and-fix mechanism to handle any instance or host failures in a RAC environment. The mechanism is enabled on a cache enabled data source, by simply flipping the DataSource property fastconnectionfailoverenabled to true. For example: <managed-data-source jndi-name="jdbc/managedds" description="managed DataSource"> connection-pool-name="myconnectionpool" name="managedds"/> <connection-pool name="myconnectionpool" min-connections="10" max-connections="30" inactivity-timeout="30"> <connection-factory factory-class="oracle.jdbc.pool.oracledatasource" user="scott" password="tiger" url="jdbc:oracle:thin:@//dbhost:1521/oracle"> <property name="fastconnectionfailoverenabled" value="true"/> </connection-factory> </connection-pool> Alternatively, Fast Connection Failover can be enabled by setting the system property oracle.jdbc.fastconnectionfailover to true. These are detailed in a companion article on configuring Fast Connection Failover in Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3): rces/oc4j_ds.htm We will look into Fast Connection Failover in more detail in the second half of this paper. Comprehensive JDBC and datatype support Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) data access offers comprehensive JDBC 3.0 support, like transaction savepoints, switching between local and global transactions on the same connection, reuse of PreparedStatements, named parameters in CallableStatements, new Ref interface and Datalink/URLs. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) data access features dynamic proxies like connection proxies, statement proxies, offering great ease-ofdevelopment for applications to choose data access features offered by different Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 7

8 JDBC drivers. It is very simple for applications to take advantage of the many Oracle extension features provided by the Oracle Database 10g JDBC drivers, like update batching, prefetching, define column types, etc. Besides the standard JDBC datatypes, Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) also fully supports the following advanced datatypes or enhancements by integrating with Oracle Database 10g JDBC drivers, resulting in faster application development and execution. Native IEEE DOUBLE and Native IEEE Float: the new SQL floating-point number datatype support allows Java and J2EE applications to perform faster arithmetic calculations without loss of information and with reduced storage. Enhanced VARRAY support: the addition of aggregation functions (frequent item set counting); using collections for in-lists; general set operations -- intersect; union; member; equality; etc -- particularly useful for data mining applications. LONG-to-LOB conversion: the addition of conversions functions for CLOBs and BLOB so that they are compatible with LONG; RAW and LONG RAW, simplifying their manipulation in Java applications and improve application portability. Unlimited size LOB: this feature removes the four Gigabyte length restriction for LOBs; applications can now store/retrieve binary data bigger than the current four Gigabyte limit. INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND: applications can now use Oracle database s INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND datatype for improved time management. Dynamic reconfiguration via JMX for manageability Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) data access allows users and applications to dynamically reconfigure the data sources during runtime, without having to reboot the application server instances. This adds great management flexibility for applications. The primary tool to create, delete, and modify data sources in Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) is the Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Application Server Control Console (Application Server Control Console). Through the Application Server Control Console, Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) provides full Java Management Extensions (JMX) support for managing data sources including operations to create data sources and connection pools, remove data sources and connection pools, and modify existing data sources and connection pools. When the data sources are modified in the Application Server Control Console the data sources are immediately persisted to the datasources configuration file (data-sources.xml) for that application. Dynamic data source reconfiguration also leverages the capabilities of the Implicit Connection Cache, which allows dynamic reconfiguration of the cache properties by reinitializing the cache using the specified new set of cache properties. The new Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 8

9 properties take effect on all PooledConnections newly created as well as PooledConnections that are not in use. For connections that are in use, the new properties take effect only after they are returned to the cache. Advanced transaction management for guarded data integrity Transactions offer clean and simple failure recovery semantics for applications. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) data access also showcases advanced transaction management features that safeguard data integrity and consistency. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) now offers enhanced support for the Java Transaction API (JTA) with: (1) a brand-new middle-tier transaction coordinator that supports all XA-compatible resources, (2) enriched JTA administration functions such as JMX controls, (3) transaction propagation across OC4J instances, and (4) file and database based transaction logging. Prior to Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3), OC4J employed the transaction coordinator inside Oracle database for global commit control, which required complex configuration effort. The new middle-tier commit coordinator greatly simplifies the configuration task, while offering faster performance at the same time. The primary tool for configuring the Transaction Manager is the Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Application Server Control Console. The Console provides two tools for JTA configuration and management: The Transaction Manager (JTA) page: presents the JTA statistics and details of all the transactions that are currently running or being recovered, allows for JTA reconfiguration and administration of those transactions. The JTAResource Mbean: for configuring transaction coordinator type, logging type (none, file-based, or database-based), transaction timeout, maximum concurrent transactions, etc. Transaction context propagation makes it possible for multiple OC4J instances to participate in a single global transaction. Multiple OC4J instances need to participate in the same transaction if an OC4J instance makes a remote call into another OC4J instance in the scope of an existing transaction, assuming the EJB semantics for the method support scoping work in a client's transaction. An example of this is a servlet in OC4J instance 1 obtaining a reference to an EJB residing in OC4J instance 2, starting a transaction and making a method call on the remote EJB in the scope of the transaction. When multiple OC4J instances participate in a single transaction, all work done by the participating OC4J instances as part of the global transaction is guaranteed to be atomic. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 9

10 BEST DATA ACCESS SUPPORT FOR ORACLE DATABASES Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) data access provides integrated support for up-to-date Oracle database features, offering broad and flexible support for data applications via J2EE, JDBC, TopLink, and Database Web Services. It enhances application scalability and availability with Implicit Connection Caching and Fast Connection Failover. It supports proxy authentication and secures business data with Virtual Private Database. It facilitates management flexibility and diagnosability with end-to-end tracing. Oracle Application Sever 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) is the only application server in the market that can leverage all these data access features and provide end-to-end scalability, high availability, security, and management features out-of-box at the application level. Broadest, Most Flexible, Up-to-date Support for Oracle Data Access Features Besides the data access features in Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (OC4J) core components, Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) offers broad and flexible support for data applications via JDBC, TopLink, and Database Web Services. Oracle Database 10g JDBC Overview Oracle Database 10g JDBC is best-of-the-breed JDBC driver on the market. It is the best integrated driver with Oracle databases in terms of performance, availability, manageability, ease-of-use, flexibility, and security. Oracle Database 10g JDBC has been rearchitected from previous releases. The performance optimizations in Oracle Database 10g JDBC include the optimization of Java to SQL data conversion, the reduction of the drivers code path (i.e., the reduction of the number of Java methods called to satisfy a request), the reduction of data movement to/from the database and reusing Java objects. With these effort plus the Implicit Connection Caching and Fast Connection Failover support for high availability, the outcome is faster and reliable SQL/XML data query/retrieval, best performing custom Java/J2SE/J2EE applications as well as best standard SPECJApp200x benchmarks results. For faster Java/J2EE application development, Oracle Database 10g JDBC offers: (1) comprehensive support for JDBC 3.0 APIs including transaction savepoints, switching between local and global transactions on the same connection, reuse of PreparedStatements, named parameters, new Ref interface and Datalink/URLs, and JDBC RowSets; (2) comprehensive data access support allowing customers to fully utilize the features offered by Oracle Database 10g, including INTERVAL DAY TO SECOND type support, new IEEE native database types support, unlimited LOB size, VARRAY enhancements, and LONG-to-LOB conversions, proxy authentication, advanced encryption algorithms, binding variables by names. For simplified Java application deployment, Oracle Database 10g JDBC offers: Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 10

11 new hassle-free OCI drivers install, hassle-free upgrade, easy migration, and greater compatibility with different versions of Oracle databases. Finally, reducing the functional gap between type-2 and type-4 JDBC drivers, Oracle Database 10g JDBC includes: support for PL/SQL index tables, passing, retrieving, and registering parameters by name, and support for RAC/HA allows flexibility of using different flavor of JDBC drivers for development and deployment. Oracle Database Web Services Overview There are lots of applications written in PL/SQL and running on Oracle Database. Increasingly customers leverage these assets by exposing these artifacts as web services. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) is the only application server that can seamlessly expose Oracle database artifacts (packages, stored procedures, functions, Java stored procedures, and Oracle AQ queues and topics) as standard based web services. It requires no coding in the middle tier to expose these artifacts as web services. A web service end point is created for every exposed service by the Oracle Application Server runtime. No other application server vendor provides such functionality out-of-box for Oracle Database applications. Oracle TopLink Overview Oracle TopLink is an industry leading OR mapping framework that addresses the disparity between Java objects and Oracle databases. Oracle TopLink enables developers to: (i) Persist Java objects in virtually any relational database supported by a JDBC driver; (ii) Map any object model to any relational schema, using the Oracle TopLink Mapping Workbench graphical mapping tool; (iii) Use Oracle TopLink successfully, even if they are unfamiliar with SQL or JDBC, because Oracle TopLink provides a clean, object-oriented view of relational databases; (iv) TopLink provides mapping of complex SQL Types (specific to Oracle database) to Java, thus leveraging the advanced features of the Oracle database within a J2EE application without custom coding. Implicit Connection Caching We gave an overview of the Implicit Connection Caching features in the first part of this paper. In this section, we look more closely at some of the key Oracle Database 10g features that have been integrated into Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3). Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) data sources transparently and centrally manage connection caches. It utilizes the Connection Cache Manager for both cache management and binding connection caches to data sources. Besides central cache management, the Implicit Connection Cache provides a rich set of features including: transparent or implicit access to the connection cache, support for heterogeneous authenticated connection, the ability to refresh or recycle stale Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 11

12 connections from the cache, connection retrieval based on user defined attributes and weights (connection striping). Cache Management and Maintenance The Connection Cache Manager is responsible for creating, destroying connection caches, as well as maintaining the sanity of each cache. A connection cache is usually created transparently during the data source access. The first connection request on a data source attempts to create the cache; but if it already exists, then the cache creation is skipped and the connection request is simply routed to the cache, which retrieves a connection. Binding a Connection Cache to the Data Source The Connection Cache Manager associates a connection cache with its data source, during the creation and re-initialization of the cache. The association ends when the cache is removed/destroyed. This ensures an efficient access and connection retrieval when getconnection() request is invoked on the DataSource object. Multi-cache Support Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) utilizes the Connection Cache Manager to support the coexistence of more than one caches. Each cache, identified by a unique name, is tightly bound to a data source. Each cache is either created transparently when getconnection() requests are made on a cache enabled data source or is created explicitly in the middle tier via the Connection Cache Manager API. There are no limits imposed by the Connection Cache Manager on the number of caches that can be created. This number is limited by the resources available in the JVM and the Oracle database server. Once a cache is created, it may either be explicitly removed via the Connection Cache Manager, or is removed when the DataSource is closed after use, via the DataSource close() API. Connection Recycling Support Over a period of time, connection cache accumulates stale connections. There are two modes for recycling or refreshing stale connections in the cache: REFRESH_INVALID_CONNECTIONS and REFRESH_ALL_CONNECTIONS. With REFRESH_INVALID_CONNECTIONS, each PooledConnection in the cache is checked; if invalid, the connection s resources are removed and replaced with a new PooledConnection. With REFRESH_ALL_CONNECTIONS, all the available connections in the cache are closed and replaced with new valid physical connections. Connection Cache Properties Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 12

13 The Implicit Connection Cache furnishes a range of connection cache properties that govern the characteristics of a connection cache. These are seamlessly integrated in Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) data sources as declaratively configurable connection pool XML attributes. Cache properties are set either while creating the cache for the first time, on the DataSource, or when re-initializing the cache via the Connection Cache Manager. Typical properties include: the minimum, maximum, and initial number of connections to be kept in a cache, statement cache size, different connection timeouts for maintaining cache sanity, properties controlling connection validation, etc. Dynamic Reconfiguration Support Implicit Connection Cache allows dynamic reconfiguration of the cache properties by reinitializing the cache using the specified new set of cache properties. The new properties take effect on all PooledConnections newly created as well as PooledConnections that are not in use. For connections that are in use, the new properties take effect only after they are returned to the cache. Abandoned Connection Support Abandoned or orphaned connections are those that have been checked out of the connection cache, but never returned to the cache. Implicit Connection Cache automatically detects and reclaims these connections back to the cache, based on the AbandonedConnectionTimeout property on the connection cache. Setting this property to a valid timeout value starts a heartbeat monitoring process on this connection that is checked out. When a heartbeat is not registered on the connection for the specified period of time, the connection is considered abandoned and is automatically reclaimed and put back into the cache. Statement Caching Support The MaxStatementsLimit connection cache property sets the maximum statements to keep open for a connection cache. If a cache is reinitialized with this property and if more cursors are cached than specified, the extra cursors are closed. Fast Connection Failover In multi-tier applications with databases and application server middle tiers, detection of failures and propagation of failure events to tiers that dispatch requests is critical for end-to-end failover. In Oracle Database 10g RAC (Real Application Cluster) or CFC (Cold Fail-over Cluster), instance failures cause stale connections in the pool. Application retries and fails if stale connections are not cleaned up. Application code, running on an application server has to detect if SQLException was caused due to a Fatal Error on the connection by explicitly calling Connection Error Detection API and is responsible for closing the connection pool and requesting for new connection pool. Additionally, some failures involving the complete loss of a database node (such as a halt or simply a loss of network connection) usually require a complete Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 13

14 network timeout cycle to expire before the failure is actually detected and the corresponding failover takes place. Oracle Database 10g JDBC offers the high availability solution Fast Connection Failover. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) fully integrates this solution, while no other application server provides this functionality. When the backend database is RAC, Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) subscribes to the RAC node failure/failover events that get propagated to ONS (Oracle Notification Service). ONS in turn propagates these failure events to the JDBC layer in Oracle Application Server, and the JDBC layer transparently cleans up the existing stale connection pool for the failed RAC node and creates another connection pool for a live RAC node. More specifically, the Fast Connection Failover mechanism handles Service DOWN or UP events and Host DOWN events. The DOWN event processing always cleans up the bad connections from the cache. The UP event processing does Load Balancing of connections in the cache. As we have mentioned in the first half of this paper, Fast Connection Failover is easily configured in Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) s component configuration file, for example, Oracle Application Server Containers for J2EE (OC4J) data-sources.xml without requiring any code changes. By fully integrating the Fast Connection Failover functionality, Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) provides the following advantages: Fast shutdown of connections in the connection cache, when RAC instance/node failures are detected. This prevents bad or invalid connections being handed out to application connection requests. For an application that depends on the Implicit Connection Cache for total connection management, the Fast Connection Failover mechanism provides maximum connection availability. Load Balancing of connections when a RAC UP event is generated: in this model, connections are established and load balanced to all active RAC instances, without waiting for application connection retries/requests. Note that for RAC setups, the service is almost always instantly available, except when the entire service is down. Oracle Database Security - Proxy-authentication and Virtual Private Database (VPD) Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) provides end-to-end integrated security for both Application Server users and Oracle Database users, supporting advanced security features in Oracle Database 10g, such as proxy-authentication and Virtual Private Database (VPD). Proxy-authentication support in Oracle databases allows a client user to connect to the database through an application server, as a proxy user. The client user Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 14

15 authenticates itself with the application server, while the application server authenticates itself as the proxy user with the Oracle database. The client user's name is maintained all the way to the database on any proxy connection opened this way. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) supports proxy-authentication with Oracle native data sources, leveraging the proxy-authentication functionality in Oracle Database 10g JDBC drivers. Virtual Private Database (VPD) is the aggregation of server-enforced, fine-grained access control, together with a secure application context in the Oracle Database. It provides a flexible mechanism for building applications that enforce the security policies customers designate, only where such control is necessary. By dynamically appending SQL statements with a predicate, VPD limits access to data at the row level and ties the security policy to the table (or view or synonym) itself. Virtual Private Database is enforced at the database layer and takes into account application-specific logic used to limit data access within the database. Both commercial off-the-shelf applications and custom-built applications can take advantage of its granular access control, without the need to change any lines of application code. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) fully supports VPD in any data source type, as well as in TopLink, taking advantage of VPD s application transparency benefit. Users and applications can use data source/jdbc or TopLink to define security policies as stored PL/SQL procedures in Oracle databases. End-to-End Tracing End-to-end tracing in Oracle Database 10g JDBC and Oracle Database 10g greatly improves multi-tier application diagnosability by allowing the propagation of application metrics from the Web-tier to the database server so that resource consumption can be measured and monitored throughout all the involved tiers. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) offers Oracle Enterprise Manager EM 10g s Application Service Level Management solution, providing end-to-end performance diagnostics that trace transactions and individual page requests through the Oracle Application Server stack and Oracle database. The Interactive Transaction Trace feature enables administrators to trace a web application transaction on an on-demand basis from the client browser, through the middle tier components and database. The transaction trace provides detailed diagnostics including: total transaction time, network time, server time (servlet / JSP, EJB times) and database time (JDBC time / SQL statement performance) for each and every URL accessed in the transaction. In addition, the invocation paths for every JSP/ servlet, EJB, and SQL statement are traced, enabling administrators to quickly and intuitively isolate the performance bottlenecks for any transaction. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 15

16 Similarly, the Middle Tier Page Performance feature traces individual URL requests historically through the middle tier (JSP, servlet, EJB time) down to the database (JDBC time / SQL statement) level. URL processing call stack details enable administrators to view all JSP, servlet, EJB and SQL statement invocation paths, and to rapidly pinpoint exactly where application bottlenecks lie. Furthermore, the Application Performance Correlation feature enables administrators to correlate application performance metrics over time with various system component (including host, application server, database, etc.) metrics. This enables administrators to identify system-related factors that could have potentially impacted the performance of their application. In addition, ASLM is fully integrated with the Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g system monitoring and management framework. This integration provides for a full end-to-end perspective and consolidated administration of an application s infrastructure. Administrators can monitor and manage all application components, including the hosts, and application server, and databases from a single view. SUMMARY Enterprise data access is an indispensable part of almost every mission-critical business application. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) brings comprehensive data access support for today s agile enterprises: from connection caching to failover, from simple-and-clean configuration to dynamic reconfiguration, from complete standard and datatype support to advanced transaction management. At the same time, Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) continue to provide the industry s best integrated support for Oracle databases, allowing applications and developers to fully take advantage of the unparalleled Oracle data access features in terms of performance, availability, easeof-development, manageability, and security. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise Page 16

17 Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 (10.1.3) - Data Access for the Agile Enterprise August 2005 Author: Frances Zhao Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA U.S.A. Worldwide Inquiries: Phone: Fax: Copyright 2005, Oracle. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.