Stream-pipe connections (UNIX and Linux)

A stream pipe is a UNIX™ interprocess communication (IPC) facility that allows processes on the same computer to communicate with each other.

Stream-pipe connections have the following advantages:
  • Unlike shared-memory connections, stream pipes do not pose the security risk of being overwritten or read by other programs that explicitly access the same portion of shared memory.
  • Unlike shared-memory connections, stream-pipe connections allow distributed transactions between database servers that are on the same computer.
Stream-pipe connections have the following disadvantages:
  • Stream-pipe connections might be slower than shared-memory connections on some computers.
  • Stream pipes are not available on all platforms.
  • When you use shared memory or stream pipes for client/server communications, the hostname entry is ignored.