More on Oracle 11g DRCP

Due to comments from Sreekumar Seshadri and Krishna Mohan Itikarlapalli from Oracle, I've corrected my previous post on DRCP Functionality. I must own up that I've omitted reading chapter on DRCP in OCI Programmers Guide. Based on name "Database Resident Connection Pooling" I implied that it's only required to configure it at Database Server Side. In Fact it is partially true, because if you want to take advantage of Connection pooling it's needed to change client code too. There are 3 levels of benefits of DRCP and OCI enhancements in Oracle 11g:

1. Configuring DRCP at DB Side without any change in Application. In this case only processes are pooled, and every time new connection is made, new session is created. This is what I've observed in previous post when I was using SQL*plus.
2. and 3. need changes in Application in code that connect to DB. I will just quote OCI Programmers Guide:
   

   • Applications that use OCISessionGet() outside of an OCISessionPool, and specify the connection class and set purity=SELF will be able to reuse both DRCP pooled server processes and sessions. However, following an OCISessionRelease(), OCI will terminate the connection to the connection broker. On the next OCISessionGet() call, the application will reconnect to the broker. Once it reconnects, the DRCP will assign a pooled server (and session) belonging to the connection class specified. Reconnecting, however, incurs the cost of connection establishment and re-authentication. Such applications achieve better sharing of DRCP resources (processes and sessions) but do not get the benefit of caching connections to the connection broker.

   • Applications that use OCISessionPool APIs and specify the connection class and set purity=SELF make full use of the Database Resident Connection Pool functionality through reuse of both the pooled server process and the associated session and also getting the benefit of cached connections to the connection broker. Cached connections do not incur the cost of re-authentication on OCISessionGet().

So to really test DRCP I need to write some code to test it.

Cheers, Paweł