1 Release Notes

1.4.1 General Notes

The German characters ä, ö, ü and ß, cannot be used in the names of tables, columns, fields, synonyms, and so on. This is because these characters are converted into bracket symbols (for example, {). The characters can, however, be stored as data.

1.4.2 Oracle Spatial

The SDO_GEORASTER feature is not supported.

1.4.3 Oracle Real Application Testing

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.2) does not support the Workload Replay feature. Starting with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.3), this features is supported.

1.4.4 ALTER DATABASE … RESIZE

The operation ALTER DATABASE ... RESIZE, to make a database file smaller, is not supported on BS2000. This operation has no effect on the corresponding BS2000 files.

However, database files can be altered to larger sizes either manually, by using ALTER or automatically, when a tablespace is defined with AUTOEXTEND.

1.4.5 IEEE Standard Floating Point Number Restrictions

The BINARY FLOAT and BINARY DOUBLE data types are not supported for customer-written database applications running on BS2000/OSD.

Attempts to store or fetch these types from an application program running on BS2000/OSD produces unpredictable results with both local and remote Oracle databases.

1.4.6 SQL*Loader

The binary data types FLOAT and DOUBLE of SQL*Loader are not supported on BS2000/OSD. Using these data types with SQL*Loader and External Tables produces unpredictable results.

Use the external, non-binary data type FLOAT EXTERNAL instead.

Multithreading functionality of direct path loads is not supported on BS2000.

1.4.7 Oracle Scheduler

External Jobs are not supported.

1.4.8 INIT.ORA Parameters

A few initialization parameters in the INIT.ORA file, described in the generic documentation are not supported by Oracle Database 11g Release 2 for BS2000/OSD. Refer to Appendix C, "Initialization Parameters and the Parameter File" for more information.

1.4.9 Archiving to Tape

Archiving to tape is not supported. The archive log files must always be created as disk files. However, you may use normal BS2000 backup procedures to back up the archive log files created by the archive process.

1.4.10 Import and Export

This section provides information about Import and Export:

• Avoid ASCII/EBCDIC conversions by the operating system, FTP, or PERCON. Import and Export utilities perform their own conversions. Additional conversions render the files unusable.

• Import and export on tapes are not possible to or from more than one tape.

1.4.11 Oracle Data Pump Import and Oracle Data Pump Export

This section provides information about Oracle Data Pump Import and Oracle Data Pump Export:

• Avoid ASCII/EBCDIC conversions by the operating system, FTP, or PERCON. Oracle Data Pump Import and Oracle Data Pump Export utilities perform their own conversions; additional conversions render the files unusable.

• Tapes are not supported with Data Pump Export and Data Pump Import.

1.4.12 Globalization Support

User-defined character sets implemented by Customizing Locale Data as described in Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide are not supported in this release.

1.4.13 Oracle Call Interface

The following features are currently not supported:

• OCI shared mode functionality

• OCI publish-subscribe functions

• OCI Thread package

1.4.14 SQL*Plus

The following remarks relate to SQL*Plus:

• SQL*Plus truncates and displays a warning message if the input lines exceed 511 characters.

• If you use the SQL*Plus -s option, then it must be the first option entered at the prompt.

• The internal message buffer is limited to 76 characters, therefore, certain messages are truncated. This typically occurs if a message includes a second message. In such cases, you must refer to the message number part of the second message. For further information about the error message, refer to the either Oracle Database Error Messages or Appendix A, "Oracle Error Messages for BS2000/OSD" of this guide.

• If ECHO is set to ON, TAB is set to ON, and you specify a spool file, then the listing of commands may be misaligned.

• To define the POSIX editor edtu as your preferred text editor with SQL*Plus in the POSIX environment, the POSIX correction level A43 or higher is required.

1.4.15 ADRCI

If your preferred POSIX text editor is edtu, then the POSIX correction level A43 or higher is required.

1.4.16 Connecting from Oracle Database 10g clients

Oracle Database 10g clients can connect to Oracle Database 11g Release 2 instances on Fujitsu BS2000/OSD, if the initialization parameter SEC_CASE_SENSITIVE_LOGON is set to FALSE. Otherwise, the connection fails with the following message:

ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied

1.4.17 Utilities in the POSIX environment

For utilities in the POSIX shell, such as SQL*Plus, Import or Export, the maximum length of path names is 54 bytes.This restriction applies to the names of SQL scripts or spool files.

1.4.18 Oracle Net Services

The following remarks relate to Oracle Net Services:

• When you specify a name for the listener in the LISTENER.ORA file, Oracle recommends that the name is less than 20 characters long. If you use a listener name with more than 20 characters, then you must specify a log directory (trace directory) and a log file (trace file).

• The listener can be started only if the POSIX subsystem is running.

1.4.19 Oracle Net BEQ Protocol

The support of the handoff/direct handoff technique makes the BEQ protocol incompatible to the BEQ protocol of releases prior to Oracle Database 10g Release 2. For example, an 11.2 listener cannot start a server of an Oracle9i instance.

1.4.20 Oracle Protocol Support for TCP/IP

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) divided port numbers into three ranges:

• Well Known Ports from 0 through 1023

• Registered Ports from 1024 through 49151

• Dynamic, or Private Ports, or both, from 49152 through 65535

Fujitsu documentation for TCP/IP on BS2000 recommends setting the privileged port to 2050. However, using a registered Oracle port number may cause conflicts. You can find more details about service names and port numbers at http://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/service-names-port-numbers.xhtml. For example, if you set the port number for the listener process to 1521, then any Oracle process that listens on such a registered port number may fail with the following error:

TNS-12545: Connect failed because target host or object does not exist
TNS-12560: TNS:protocol adapter error
TNS-00515: Connect failed because target host or object does not exist
BS2000 Error: 126: Can't assign requested address
BS2000 BCAM-RC: 40010020

The workaround is to use a non-privileged port, or to set the privileged port number to a value less than 1500, usually to 1024.

1.4.21 POSIX Subsystem

Oracle Database 11g Release 2 requires the POSIX subsystem and access to the POSIX file system. The following exceptions may occur:

• Ask the BS2000 administrator to increase the number of UFS devices (parameter NOSTTY in SYSSSI.POSIX-BC.version), if you get the following message:

  CCM0090: ALL UFS TERMINAL DEVICES ARE IN USE OR PERMISSION DENIED
  

• The termination of the POSIX subsystem also terminates the Oracle instance.