RE: Differences between Oracle JDBC thin and thick drivers

In "Java Programming with Oracle JDBC", Don Bales actually benchmarks the differences. The copy here in our group seems to have taken legs, so recalling from memory, I recall that under some circumstances the thin is faster and other times the thick is faster. The differences weren't great, and given the hassles of setting up SQL*Net clients, thin looks good to me. Dennis Williams
DBA
Lifetouch, Inc.
dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 11:23 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

But it's a very important difference. The thin driver, basically just the classes12.zip file, is slower than the OCI. The advantage for me is that I don't need an Oracle supported platform (mine is Linux on Alpha) to run the thin driver. For our upcoming JDBC stuff here at work, I can't imagine why we wouldn't want to use OCI.

Rich Jesse                           System/Database Administrator
Rich.Jesse_at_qtiworld.com              Quad/Tech International, Sussex, WI USA

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ben Poels [mailto:poelsb_at_post.queensu.ca]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2002 4:03 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
> Subject: RE: Differences between Oracle JDBC thin and thick drivers
>
>
> Hi
>
> I believe the difference is that the OCI drivers use SQL*Net
> or NET8 or whatever they call it now, whereas the thin driver
> does not require SQL*Net on the client machine.
>
> Ben Poels
> Sr. Technical Analyst
> Queen's University
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Avrami
> Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2002 4:29 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
>
>
>
>
> Hello all,
>
> I have a question concerning the Oracle JDBC thin vs. thick drivers
> and how they might affect operations from an application perspective.
>
>
> We're in a Solais 8/Oracle 8.1.7.2 environment. We have several
> applications on several servers connecting to the Oracle database.
>
>
> For redundancy, we're looking into setting up TAF (transparent
> application failover). Currently, some of our apps use the Oracle
> JDBC thin drivers to talk to the database, with a connection
> string that like this:
>
> jdbc:oracle:thin:@host:port:ORACLE_SID
>
> In a disaster recovery mode, where we would switch the database
> from one server to another, the host name in the above string
> would become invalid. That means we have to shut down our application
> servers and restart them with an updated string.
>
> Using the Oracle OCI (thick) driver though, allows us to connect
> to a Net8 service instead of a specific server:
>
> jdbc:oracle:oci8:@NET8_SERVICE_NAME
>
> Coupled with the FAILOVER=ON option configured in Net8, it is
> then possible to direct a connection from the first server to
> the failover database on another server. This is exactly what
> we would like to do.
>
> My question is, from an application perspective, how is the Oracle
> thick driver different from the thin driver? If everything
> else is "equal" (i.e. the thick driver is compatible with the
> app servers) would there be something within the the thick/OCI
> driver that could limit functionality vs. the thin driver?
>
> My understand, which obviously is sketchy, is that the thick
> driver is a superset of the thin driver. If this is the case,
> and for example if all database connections were handled through
> a configuration file with the above OCI connection string, then
> theoretically the thick driver should work.
>
> If anyone has any info on this that they can share, it would
> be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Lou Avrami

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