DBD::Oracle 1.20 Released

The latest release of DBD::Oracle is now ready and can be found at: CPAN DBD::Oracle. It is a Perl module that works with the DBI module to provide access to Oracle databases. It is maintained by me, John Scoles as open source/free software, under the auspices of The Pythian Group.

The release has been fully tested with the latest version of DBI (1.601).

Below is the list of the changes and/or fixes in this release.

• Fixed lob test so it skips the one test that relies on it if v$ session. From Rafael Kitover.
• Fixed // with /* */ in dbdimp.c From John Scoles.
• Fixed for execute_for_fetch in Oracle.pm returning 0 instead of 0E0. From Martin J. Evans
• Added README.64bit.txt that contains help for compiling on 64 bit boxes from John Scoles
• Fixed typo in Oracle.pm from Tom R.
• Added support for ora_charset, ora_ncharset. From Stephen J. Smith
• Fixed Makefile.PL for better handling of empty array in File::Find::find. From Slaven Rezic.
• Fixed references to README.clients.txt in Makefile.PL. From John Scoles.
• Added PERL_NO_GET_CONTEXT for better multi-threaded support. From John Scoles.
• Changed required version of DBI to be 1.51. From John Scoles.
• Fixed bug in 31lob.t. From John Scoles.
• Added notes on installing Instantclient.rpm to README.Lunix.txt.
• Added support for OCI array bind. From Alexander V. Alekseev.
• Added support for select of OCI Embedded Objects. From John Scoles.
• Added a tip in README.64bit.txt. From cartmanltd.
• Added fix to Makefile.PL for finding SQLplus for Ubuntu Server (but should work for others). From Martin J. Evans.
• Added fix to Makefile.PL for Gentoo AMD64. From Tom R.
• Added fix to dbdimp.c for speed up of Null-Operations. From Andreas Behal.
• Added fix to dbdimp.c for SQLCS_NCHAR index use on varchar2s. From Peter J. Holzer.

The first big addition is Alexander’s patch to add support for array binds with the SYS.DBMS_SQL.VARCHAR2_TABLE and SYS.DBMS_SQL.NUMBER_TABLE types in SQL calls.

The next big addition is support for selects of embedded the OCI object types OBJECT, VARRAY and TABLE in any combination and, as far as I know, unlimited depth. Support is seamless and recursive, which means you need only supply a simple SQL statement to get all the values in an embedded object as an array of scalars, or if your embedded object contains other objects or types, an array of arrays of scalars.

Please enjoy the new release, and keep an eye open for some blogs on how to use the new additions.