Oracle C++ Call Interface Programmer's Guide

Object Support
Client-Side Object Cache
Object Support
program. In this guide, specifying the placeholder variable for data is called a bind
operation. For input variables, this is called an in bind operation. For output
variables, this is called an out bind operation.
OCCI has facilities for working with object types and objects. An object type is a
user-defined data structure representing an abstraction of a real-world entity. For
example, the database might contain a definition of a person object. That object
type might have attributes—first_name, last_name, and age—which represent
a person’s identifying characteristics.
The object type definition serves as the basis for creating objects, which represent
instances of the object type. By using the object type as a structural definition, a
person object could be created with the attributes John, Bonivento, and 30.
Object types may also contain methods—programmatic functions that represent the
behavior of that object type.
OCCI provides a comprehensive API for programmers seeking to use the Oracle
database server’s object capabilities. These features can be divided into several
major categories:
■ Client-side object cache
■ Runtime environment for objects
■ Associative and navigational interfaces to access and manipulate objects
■ Metadata class to describe object type metadata
■ Object Type Translator (OTT) utility, which maps internal Oracle schema
information to client-side language bind variables
See Also:
■ Oracle9i Database Concepts and
■ Oracle9i Application Developer’s Guide - Object-Relational Features
for a more detailed explanation of object types and objects
The object cache is a client-side memory buffer that provides lookup and memory
management support for objects. It stores and tracks objects which have been
fetched by an OCCI application from the server to the client side. The client-side
object cache is created when the OCCI environment is initialized in object mode.
Introduction to OCCI 1-9