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Performance and scalability: Oracle Thin Driver Vs. OCI Driver

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  1. Oracle Thin Driver Vs. OCI Driver (9 messages)

    Hi,
      We are developing a web application using Weblogic 5.1
    App Server and Oracle 8*i database. At present , we are using Oracle Thin Driver for our database connection. Oracle Thin drivers were chosen instead of OCI drivers as they were supposed to be providing better performance.
      However, I feel that Thin driver, being pure Java Type 4 driver, will have lesser performance potential when compared to the native Oracle OCI drivers from Oracle or Weblogic (Weblogic OCI or JDBC Kona) .
      I would very much appreciate if you could let me know of your thoughts on this subject. Also, it will be great if you could provide some references to such performance comparisons regarding Oracle Drivers.
    Thanks,
    Sunil
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    Threaded Messages (9)

  2. Oracle Thin Driver Vs. OCI Driver[ Go to top ]

    In my experience from many different clients, you are MUCH better off using the thin driver. The issue is the OCI driver isnt thread safe and you will find that 1) this causes the driver to be slower then the thin driver and 2) this makes the OCI driver alot less stable.

    Your first choice was right, stick with the thin driver.

    Dave Wolf
    Internet Applications Division
    Sybase
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  3. Oracle Thin Driver Vs. OCI Driver[ Go to top ]

    But there's a fail-over issue, that OCI driver can preserve a state of it's clients, where as the thin driver cannot.
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  4. Oracle Thin Driver Vs. OCI Driver[ Go to top ]

    Hi Dave,
     Thanks for your response. I have heard that Thin drivers have problems when they are used in a clustered application server environment with multi-threaded programs using database connections.
      Also, any idea where I can find some documentation on performance comparisons between the two.
    Thanks,
    Sunil
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  5. Oracle Thin Driver Vs. OCI Driver[ Go to top ]

    That's interesting - my experience with the 8.1.5 drivers was the opposite. I never noticed any bugs in either driver but did come to the conclusion that the OCI driver was 20-30% faster than the thin on Solaris 2.5.

    This was on the production machines for living.com (now deceased) - with several thousand users hitting the site at a given time via Dynamo 4.5.

    I guess YMMV.

    Mike
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  6. Oracle Thin Driver Vs. OCI Driver[ Go to top ]


    Another issue with partially native drivers is that they're usually more difficult to install (you don't just add a .jar file to your lib directory or classpath and change your JDBC connect string).

    They also tie you to one deployment platform. Worth keeping in mind ...

    Regards,
    Ben Flaumenhaft
    Principal, Sidelight Consulting
    http://www.sidelight.com
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  7. Oracle Thin Driver Vs. OCI Driver[ Go to top ]

    Hi,
       I am using Solaris 2.8 Oracle 8.1.7 JDK 1.3.1 and I found that Thin performs better at higher Transaction rates compared to OCI and uses less CPU. But Oracle processes uses more CPU to handle these requests. Also, its much easier to configure that the OCI driver. I have reverse experience with earlier versions of oracle and solaris.

    Thanks,
    -Ramesh
    Sun Microsystems.
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  8. Oracle Thin Driver Vs. OCI Driver[ Go to top ]

    I think this will help you resolve the issue;

    1) http://www.csee.umbc.edu/help/oracle8/java.815/a64685/getsta1.htm

    2) http://sales.esicom.com/sales/oracle/java.816/a81354/overvw2.htm

    3) http://searchoracle.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid41_gci920399,00.html

    4) http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis550/TRASH/JDBC_doc/jdbcoci3.htm
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  9. Oracle8i - JDBC Performance[ Go to top ]

    http://technet.oracle.com/tech/java/sqlj_jdbc/pdf/jdbcperf.pdf
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  10. Oracle8i - JDBC Performance[ Go to top ]

    I think this will help you resolve the issue;

    1) http://www.csee.umbc.edu/help/oracle8/java.815/a64685/getsta1.htm

    2) http://sales.esicom.com/sales/oracle/java.816/a81354/overvw2.htm

    3) http://searchoracle.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid41_gci920399,00.html

    4) http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~cis550/TRASH/JDBC_doc/jdbcoci3.htm
    Reply to this Reply to original