What's New in Oracle Database SecureFiles and Large Objects Developer's Guide?

This section describes the new features in the following releases:

LOB Features Introduced in Oracle Database 11g Release 2

The DBFS Client supports Windows platforms. See "DBFS Prerequisites".
CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE now have a LOW option for compression of SecureFiles. See "CREATE TABLE Compression" and "ALTER TABLE Compression".
LOB prefetching has JDBC support, as does zero-copy input and output. Both improve performance by reducing server round trips. See "LOB Prefetching to Improve Performance".
The Oracle Database File System creates a standard file system interface for files and directories that are stored in database tables. See Chapter 5, "Introducing the Oracle Database File System" through Chapter 10, "Creating a DBFS Store".
Database File System Links and Hierarchical Storage Management allow you to store SecureFiles content on any tape library (for example, those managed by RMAN). See "PL/SQL Packages for SecureFiles LOBs and DBFS" and Chapter 9, "DBFS Hierarchical Store".

Oracle SecureFiles add the following capabilities:

Intelligent LOB compression enables users to explicitly compress data to save disk space. See "About Compression", "ALTER TABLE Compression", and "ALTER TABLE Compression".
Deduplication automatically detectd duplicate LOB data and conserved space by only storing one copy of the LOB. See "About Deduplication", "ALTER TABLE Deduplication", and "ALTER TABLE Deduplication".
Encryption stores data in-place and makes it available for random reads and writes. See "About Encryption", "CREATE TABLE Encryption", and "ALTER TABLE Encryption".
LOB data path optimization includes logical cache above storage layer, read prefetching, new caching modes, vectored IO, and so on.
New LOB APIs have been added to both PL/SQL packages and OCI inteface to accommodate SecureFiles, as well as new or amended SQL commands. Existing OCI functions support the new SecureFiles.

SQL statements like CREATE TABLE and ALTER TABLE have new parameters to ensure proper configuration of SecureFiles.High performance space management includes changes to LOB SQL statements and DBMS_SPACE package changes. See Chapter 4, "Using Oracle SecureFiles LOBs".