[ANN] ruby-oci8 2.0.3 and 1.0.7

Ruby-oci8 2.0.3 and 1.0.7 are released. These are Oracle modules using
OCI8 API.

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

Ruby-oci8 2.0.3 is stable from this release. Imcompatible changes will
be done from now. An exception is made for object type support. Object
type support has been unstable yet. It will be stable in ruby-oci8
2.1.0.

Ruby-oci8 1.0.7 is a maintenance release. New realeases will not be
added to ruby-oci8 1.0.

Note: Active record oracle adapter doesn't work with 2.0.3.
Use Active record oracle_enhanced adapter instead.
 http://rubyforge.org/projects/oracle-enhanced

What's new in 2.0.3.

* Imcompatible Changes

  - Number column in a SQL statement

    Changes the default data type for number column which fit neither
    Integer nor Float from OraNumber to BigDecimal.

      conn.exec("select 1.0 from dual") do |row|
        p row[0] # => BigDecimal("1") if the ruby-oci8 version is 2.0.3.
                 # => OraNumber(1) if the version is 2.0.2.
      end

  - Priority of OraNumber within numerical types

    The return types of basic arithmetic operations with other numerical
    types are changed.

    2.0.3:
      OraNumber + Integer    => OraNumber  (OraNumber wins.)
      OraNumber + Float      => Float      (OraNumber loses.)
      OraNumber + Rational   => Rational   (OraNumber loses.)
      OraNumber + BigDecimal => BigDecimal (OraNumber loses.)

    2.0.2:
      OraNumber + Integer    => OraNumber  (OraNumber wins always.)
      OraNumber + Float      => OraNumber
      OraNumber + Rational   => OraNumber
      OraNumber + BigDecimal => OraNumber

  - Interval day to second

    The retrived value of Oracle data type "interval day to second"
    was changed from the number of days as a Rational to the number
    of seconds as a Float by default.
    Use OCI8::BindType::IntervalDS.unit = :day to make it compatible
    with the previous versions.

      conn.exec("select to_dsinterval('0 00:00:01') from dual") do |row|
        p row[0] # => 1.0 if the version is 2.0.3 and
                 #    OCI8::BindType::IntervalDS.unit is :second.
                 # => (1/86400) if the version is 2.0.3 and
		 #    OCI8::BindType::IntervalDS.unit is :day or
		 #    the version is 2.0.2.
      end

  - Date, timestamp, timestamp with time zone data types and ruby 1.9.2

    These data types are retrived always as Time values when the
    ruby version is 1.9.2 because the Time class is enhanced to
    represent any time zone and is free from year 2038 problem.

    Prior to ruby 1.9.2, if the time cannot be represented by
    Unix time or the time zone is neither utc nor local, they are
    retrived as DateTime values.

  - Non-blocking mode and ruby 1.9

    non-blocking mode is enabled by default when the ruby is 1.9.

* New Features

  - BigDecimal and Rational are availabe as bind values.

  - New methods OCI8#module=, OCI8#action= and OCI8#client_info= are added.

    These methods change the module name, the action name and the client_info
    in the current session respectively.

    After Oracle 10g client, these don't perform network round trips.
    The change is reflected to the server by the next round trip such as
    OCI8#exec, OCI8#ping, etc.

    Prior to Oracle 10g client, these call PL/SQL functions such as
    DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO.SET_MODULE, DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO.SET_ACTION,
    and DBMS_APPLICATION_INFO.SET_CLIENT_INFO internally.
    The change is reflected immediately by a network round trip.

  - OCI8::BindType.default_timezone

    The default time zone of Time or DateTime values.
    This parameter is used only when
    (1) date values are fetched and the Oracle client version is 8.x
    or
    (2) object types have date data type attributes.

    Note that if the Oracle client version is 9i or upper, the time
    zone is determined by the session time zone. The default value
    is local time zone. You can change it to GMT by executing the
    following SQL statement for each connection.

       alter session set time_zone = '00:00'

* Other specification changes

  - Add a global function OraNumber(obj) as a shortcut of OraNumber.new(obj)
    as Rational and BigDecimal do.

  - Fix to accept nil attribute in object type's
    constructors. This works only for simple data types such as number,
    string. But it doesn't for complex types such as object types.
    (requested by Remi Gagnon)

  - add DATE datatype support in object types.

  - Change OCI8::LOB#write to accept an object which is not a String and
    doesn't respond to 'to_str' as IO#write does.
    (requested by Christopher Jones)

  - Change the initial polling interval of
    non-blocking mode for ruby 1.8 from 100 msec to 10 msec, which
    is same with ruby-oci8 1.0.

* Fixed installation issues.

  - Fix oraconf.rb for ruby 1.8.5 with Oracle 8.x which needs some object
    files to link with.
    (reported by Jayson Cena)

  - Fix oraconf.rb for ruby 1.9.2 preview1.
    (pointed by Raimonds Simanovskis)

  - Fix oraconf.rb to compile for AIX instant clients.
    (reported by Kazuya Teramoto)

What's new in 1.0.7.

* change OCI8::LOB#write to accept an object which is not a String and
  doesn't respond to 'to_str' as IO#write does.
  (requested by Christopher Jones)

* fix oraconf.rb for AIX instant clients.
  (reported by Kazuya Teramoto)

* fix oraconf.rb for ruby 1.8.5 with Oracle 8.x which needs some object
  files to link with.
  (reported by Jayson Cena)