From: KUBO Takehiro <kubo@...>
Date: 2007-11-25T20:53:29+09:00
Subject: [ANN] ruby-oci8 1.0.0

ruby-oci8 1.0.0 is released. This is a Oracle module using OCI8 API.

  http://rubyforge.org/projects/ruby-oci8/

This is second 1.0.0 release. I released 1.0.0  at 10:34:18 GMT.
But I noticed that a bug (7 in the what's new list) was not fixed.
I deleted it soon. But two people had downloaded. If you are the
person, please download again. Sorry...

What's new.

1. fix a BUG when binding a Bignum. This bug was added in
   ruby-oci8 1.0.0-rc2. (reported by Daniel Berger)

2. add OCI8#describe_table(table_name), OCI8::Cursor#column_metadata,
   OCI8::Metadata::Table, OCI8::Metadata::View and OCI8::Metadata::Column.

   table information:
     con = OCI8.new('username/password')
     table_info = con.describe_table('table_name') #=> OCI8::Metadata::Table
     table_info.columns #=> an array of OCI8::Metadata::Column.

   query information:
     con = OCI8.new('username/password')
     csr = con.exec('select * from table_name')
     csr.column_metadata #=> an array of OCI8::Metadata::Column.

5. add OCI8::BindType::BinaryDouble if oci8lib.so is compiled for
   Oracle 10g client. You can fetch exactly same values in Oracle.

   You could fetch the values in previous version by adding the
   following line.

     OCI8::BindType::Mapping[101] = OCI8::BindType::Float
     (This is default in ruby-oci8 1.0.0-rc2.)

   But a fetched value may not be exactly same with the value in
   Oracle. That's because OCI8::BindType::Float's network
   representation is Oracle NUMBER data type. A BINARY_DOUBLE
   value in Oracle become NUMBER on the network and is converted
   to Float on the client side. It makes a bit difference by
   round-off error.

   In addition, Oracle NUMBER doesn't have NaN, +Infinity and -Infinity.
   You cannot fetch the values by older versions.

   Note: When you bind a Float value, it is bound by
   OCI8::BindType::Float by default. You have two ways to bind
   it by OCI8::BindType::BinaryDouble.

   a. bind explicitly.

      con = OCI8.new('ruby/oci8')
      csr = con.parse('insert into table_name values (:1)')
      csr.bind_param(1, 10.5, OCI8::SQLT_IBDOUBLE)
      csr.exec

   b. change the default behaviour if and only if you are sure that
      the Oracle client version and Oracle server version are both
      10g or upper.

      # use OCI8::BindType::BinaryDouble for ruby's Float values.
      OCI8::BindType::Mapping[Float] = OCI8::BindType::BinaryDouble
      con = OCI8.new('ruby/oci8')
      csr = con.exec('insert into table_name values (:1)', 10.5)

4. OCI8::Cursor#fetch_hash accepts a block as a iterator.

5. [dbi] support external OS authentication.
   (contributed by Dan Fitch)

     dbh = DBI.connect('dbi:OCI8', nil, nil)

6. [dbi] add DatabaseHandle#columns and improve StatementHandle#column_info
   (suggested by Venkat Pa)

7. [bug] fix a problem when binding ''(empty string) via dbi.