Considerations When Working with the Connector for Oracle

This section describes several important considerations for using the Connector for Oracle.

  • In Oracle, a commit during a writeback operation and following an update unlocks the result set. Therefore, when a writeback result set is active, the Commit Frequency property (see the Transaction Options section in this chapter) is ignored and commits do not occur.
  • Using the Commit Options "Commit Every N Operations" or "Commit Every Operation" are not supported when using an Oracle connection in a Replication activity. When a commit is executed, as can occur should an insert, update, or remove be needed by the Replication activity, all result sets associated with the current Oracle connection are cleared. When using the Connector for Oracle, the commit operation globally affects all active SQL statements, and is not tied to a specific SQL statement. Thus, the commit operation for insert, update, and remove clears the selected result set that fetch was using, and which was obtained from a call to the underlying Select functionality.
Note: There is a limitation on how Connectors interpret an Notes® NUMBER field. When you use the "Create Target Metadata" option from a Notes® source, heavy precision loss may occur with Notes® NUMBER fields.

Data management activities and Oracle character set detection

Data management activities for the Connector for Oracle allows you to detect the character set used by the Oracle server using a facility available in Oracle 9i and later.

For data management activities involving an Oracle connector, HCL Enterprise Connector (HEI) performs a conversion test to check whether the character set used by the Oracle server and the character set selected by the user are matching or not matching. Users can specify the character set using any of the following methods:

  • Use the new "Oracle Server Codepage" setting in the Oracle connection document to specify the character set name.
  • Use the NOTES.INI variable EIOracle8NativeText and specify the character set name.
  • Use the Oracle environment variable NLS_LANG to specify the character set name (default).
    Note: From a precedence standpoint, the "Oracle server codepage" setting in the Oracle connection document has highest precedence and the "NLS_LANG" Oracle environment variable has lowest precedence.

HEI decides if it should run a conversion test depending upon the EIOracleCheckCharset parameter in the NOTES.INI file. This NOTES.INI variable determines the conversion test action. The available numeric values for EIOracleCheckCharset are as follows:

  • -1 (No Test) -- Do nothing. No conversion test is performed. HEI will not check what code page the Oracle server is using, it will check the local setting to use. Nothing will be logged in the activity log.
  • 0 (default) -- This performs a conversion test to make sure its a match and reconnects using that codepage if it not matching. HEI will override the user setting for the character set. This requires a disconnect and reconnect with the Oracle server. The conversion test output will appear in the activity log.
  • 1 (Warn) -- This performs a conversion test. It will provide output to the activity log if the codepage doesn't match but continue without changing anything. HEI will connect to the Oracle server using the user-provided codepage regardless of the server code page.
  • 2 (Fail) -- This performs a conversion test.