From:	John Scoles	Date:	Mon Apr 14 07:48:41 2008
Subject:	Announce DBD::Oracle 1.21

DBD::Oracle 1.21 Released
April 14th, 2008 - by John Scoles
The latest release of DBD::Oracle is now ready and can be found at: CPAN 
DBD::Oracle. It is a Perl module that works with the DBI module to 
provide access to Oracle databases. It is maintained by me, John Scoles, 
under the auspices of The Pythian Group as open source/free software.

The release has been fully tested with the latest version of DBI (1.601).

Below is the list of the changes and/or fixes in this release.

Changes in DBD-Oracle 1.21(svn rev 11067) 11th April 2008
Added Notes to README.win32.txt on installing Instant Client 
1.1.0.6.0from John Scoles
Added the oci_typecode_name method to get the name rather than just the 
number of an OCI_TYPECODE from John Scoles
Fixed a unreported bug with Embedded Objects from John Scoles
Fixes for #34621 & 33791 from RT cpan
Added patch to allow faster fetch from REF CURSORs from Biswadeep Chowdhury
Updated the Todo file for next version from John Scoles
Added support for the 10.2 Data Interface for Persistent LOBs by John Scoles
Changed the way pre-fetching is done by John Scoles
Added support for Scrollable cursors from John Scoles
Changed the max size of cache_rows to a sb4 rather than a int and or a 
ub4 from John Scoles
Added support for Lobs in select of OCI Embedded Objects from John 
Scoles with a big thankyou to  Paul Weiss
Fixed for embedded object in object from Paul Weiss
Added support for direct insert of large XML data into XMLType fields 
from Hendrik Fuss & John Scoles
Fixed memory leak (not releasing Temp Lob with OCILobFreeTemporary) when 
created for a bind from John Scoles
Added support for bind_param_inout_array for use with execute_array from 
John Scoles
Added enhancement for Embedded Objects handling from Paul G. Weiss
Fixed to Makefile.PL let it read makefiles from other makes from 
Alexander V Alekseev
Updated POD to tell users to Avoid Using "SQL Call" from Charles Jardine
Updated POD to account for rt.cpan.org #30910: "DBD-Oracle crashes when 
trying to read empty LOB" from John Scoles
Added DBD::Oracle impdata/threads patch from Jeffrey Klein

In this release there are a number of new features.

One important one you might want to have a look is support for binding 
an array for in-out  operations with  execute_array.
Given this sql;


    INSERT INTO foo (id, bar) VALUES (foo_id_seq.nextval, ?) RETURNING id
    INTO ?

and using execute_array to insert 200 records you will get an array back 
of the 200 new IDs inserted.

I have also added support for direct inserting of large XML files into 
an XMLType field.

Another important addition is support for Persistent LOBs if you are 
using Oracle 10.2 or later.  You can now treat LOBs as if they were any 
other form of data so say good-by to LOB locators.

Finally I have added support for native oracle 'Scrolling Cursors'.

There were also a number of bug fixes and code enhancements/updates as 
detailed above.

Cheers John Scoles