Editing Oracle Call Interface

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In computing, the '''Oracle Call Interface''' ('''OCI''') consists of a set of [[C (programming language)|C]]-language [[application programming interface|software APIs]] which provide an interface to the [[Oracle database]].

OCI offers a procedural API for not only performing certain database administration tasks (such as system startup and shutdown), but also for using [[PL/SQL]] or [[SQL]] to query, access, and manipulate data. The OCI library, based on Oracle's undocumented User Programmatic Interface (UPI), acts as an "[[interpreter (communication)|interpreter]]" between applications and the low-level database network protocol.

==History==
[[Oracle Corporation]]  first released OCI (under the name HLI, the Host Language Interface) with Oracle Database version 6 in 1988. As HLI (and subsequently OCI) operated as wrappers for UPI, their original naming conventions closely resembled those of the UPI calls they were based upon. For example, the [[Rollback (data management)|rollback]] statement: the call <code>upirol</code> in UPI became <code>orol</code> in OCI.

Later, in Oracle8 (released in 1997), OCI calls acquired more descriptive names; <code>orol</code> became <code>OCITransRollback</code>. Subsequent improvements have been made in every version of OCI, including 11g (released in 2007). Oracle Corporation claims that OCI is "So reliable that every SQL statement in the Oracle Database executes with OCI".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/oci/index.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040906134523/http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/oci/index.html |archive-date=2004-09-06 |title=Oracle Call Interface}}</ref>

==Implementations==
OCI is so popular that, in addition to [[Oracle Corporation|Oracle]], several other vendors have implemented their own libraries compatible with the OCI API. To date, OCI-compatible libraries exist for the ANTs Data Server{{Citation needed|date=September 2010}} (ADS), [[EnterpriseDB]], and the [[Linter SQL RDBMS]]

==OCI-based libraries==
Several libraries are based on top of OCI, including:

* Oracle's [[JDBC driver|Type-II JDBC Driver]] (part-Java, part native)
* Oracle's enhanced [[C++]] [[Library (computing)|library]], [[Oracle C++ Call Interface]] (OCCI), which provides an [[Object-orientated programming|object-oriented]] interface with the [[object-relational]] features of the Oracle database.
* Oracle's [[OLEDB|OLE DB]] Driver
* Oracle's [[ODBC]] Driver
* Oracle's [[.NET Framework|.NET]] Data Provider, ODP.NET
* Microsoft's [[ODBC]] Driver for Oracle
* Easysoft's [[ODBC]]-Oracle Driver
* Trolltech's  [[Qt (toolkit)|Qt C++ toolkit]] OCI driver (QOCI)

Due to the complexity of the OCI API, several easier-to-use OCI wrapper libraries also exist, such as:

* the open-source libsqlora8 library (deprecated).
* the open-source [[Ocilib|OCILIB]] library.
* the [[BSD license|Open BSD licensed]] Oracle Template Library OTL library.

==References==
{{Reflist}}

== External links ==
* {{Official website|http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/features/oci/index-090945.html}}
* [http://www.orafaq.com/wiki/Oracle_Call_Interfaces Oracle Call Interface FAQ]
* [http://forums.oracle.com/forums/forum.jspa?forumID=67&start=0 Public OCI Support Forum (OTN)]

[[Category:Oracle software]]


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