Direct Oracle Access is a component set for Embarcadero Delphi and C++Builder that provides seamless integration between these development tools and Oracle Databases. It enables applications to take maximum advantage of Oracle performance features while simplifying the development process. By directly accessing the Oracle Interface, applications benefit from optimal performance without requiring middleware such as BDE or ODBC. Direct Oracle Access supports key Oracle development patterns including packaged PL/SQL, database objects, event processing, dataset management and SQL scripting. Its component suite is designed to reduce configuration effort, optimize performance‑critical operations and simplify application deployment.

Features

High performance

Both online transaction and batch processing applications can benefit from Oracle’s performance features. Direct Oracle Access, as the name suggests, directly accesses the Oracle Interface. This guarantees optimal performance for standard database access functions. Support for Array Fetching, Array DML, PL/SQL Blocks, PL/SQL Tables, Local Statement Caching and the Direct Path Load Engine enable you to optimize your application’s performance critical functions even more.

Easy application distribution

A Direct Oracle Access application does not require middleware like the BDE or ODBC, it merely requires Oracle SQL*Net or Net8. Consequently you can deploy your application without many of the version dependency or configuration problems typically involved with middleware installation.

Oracle Package support

Most PL/SQL code in Oracle databases is programmed in packages. Direct Oracle Access provides a TOraclePackage component that allows you to easily call packaged program units without detailed declarations of these program units and their parameters. Furthermore Direct Oracle Access includes a Package Wizard that can generate classes to encapsulate the program units and record types defined in packages. This will make your Oracle packages a natural extension of the Object Pascal or C++ language.

TOracleDataSet

The dataset component in Direct Oracle Access supports Oracle record locking, record refreshing, server generated values, automatic sequence value generation, and BLOB compression. Master/detail relations can automatically be setup if a foreign key exists between the master and detail table or if the master table contains one or more collection columns or attributes (nested table or varray). The TOracleDataSet can use much of the information in the Oracle Dictionary at run time. Server Constraints can be checked on the client, and constraint error messages can be read from a message table. Format masks, range values and default values can also be read from the dictionary. This allows you to create applications with a minimum amount of ‘database knowlegde’ compiled into the executable, dynamically adopting changes in the database without even recompiling it.

Query By Example mode

The TOracleDataSet component has a Query By Example mode that enables you to provide QBE Forms in your application without any additional programming, and without any additional components or controls. The resulting QBE queries are performed on the Oracle Server, so that performance will be optimal and network traffic will be minimal. The user can supply simple query values such as JONES or 100, can include wildcard characters for string values such as JON%, and can include comparison operators such as >, <, NOT, BETWEEN, _IN _and so on.

Oracle Monitor

To monitor the database access activities of your Direct Oracle Access application you can use the Oracle Monitor utility. It displays the SQL, variables, timestamp, elapsed time, network statistics, database statistics and query execution plan of each activity. This can be helpful to find performance bottlenecks, for tuning purposes, and to solve application errors.

Alert and Pipe events

The Oracle Server includes a dbms_alert and dbms_pipe package for event processing. The TOracleEvent in Direct Oracle Access can function as a receiver for these events. It works in a background thread of your application, and can propagate database events to the familiar object events. These events can occur synchronously or asynchronously with the main thread of your application.

SQL scripts

If you need to execute many data definition language (DDL) statements, for example to perform the database installation part of your application, you can use the TOracleScript component. It has a property editor that allows you to develop the script and the individual commands. The extendible script language follows the basic SQL*Plus syntax and supports all SQL statements. It also supports substitution variables to make your scriptscustomizable.