Review new and changed features in this section to understand new options of Oracle Database 19c.

SQL*Net: Auto-Detection of Support for Out-of-Band Breaks

This feature automatically probes the network path between the client and the server in order to determine the status of out-of-band support, and automatically enable or disable it.

Out-of-band breaks were enabled by default for UNIX platforms in past releases. However, this configuration causes numerous problems when network devices on the path between the client and the server do not allow out-of-band data to pass through. This data may either be dropped or inlined leading to server-side problems such as Transparent Network Substrate (TNS) errors or data corruption. These problems are often very hard to diagnose. The solution is to turn off usage of out-of-band data manually by setting a sqlnet.ora parameter.

Oracle Network Log File Segmentation

This feature allows you to configure the maximum size and number of text log files for Oracle Network components, such as Oracle Net Listener, Connection Manager (CMAN), and global services manager.

Websocket Support for Database Client/Server Communication

The secure web socket connection establishment is designed to work over HTTPS, to support HTTPS proxies, and intermediary proxies. The Database client connection supports secure websocket protocol.

This protocol offers a native connection to the database with minimum protocol overhead.

Easy Connect Plus

The Easy Connect syntax that applications use to connect to Oracle Database has improved functionality. The new version is called Easy Connect Plus.

Easy Connect Plus simplifies Oracle Database application configuration and deployment for common use cases. With Easy Connect Plus, you no longer need to configure Oracle Net parameter files such as tnsnames.ora and sqlnet.ora. Easy Connect Plus also no longer requires you to set the TNS_ADMIN environment variable.

The following features are deprecated in this release:

Deprecation of the SERVICE_NAMES Initialization Parameter

Starting with Oracle Database 19c, customer use of the SERVICE_NAMES parameter is deprecated. It can be desupported in a future release.

The use of the SERVICE_NAMES parameter is no longer actively supported. It must not be used for high availability (HA) deployments. It is not supported to use service names parameter for any HA operations. This restriction includes FAN, load balancing, FAILOVER_TYPE, FAILOVER_RESTORE, SESSION_STATE_CONSISTENCY, and any other uses.

To manage your services, Oracle recommends that you use the SRVCTL or GDSCTL command line utilities, or the DBMS_SERVICE package.

Deprecation of Weak Native Network Encryption and Integrity Algorithms

The DES, DES40, 3DES112, 3DES168, RC4_40, RC4_56, RC4_128, RC4_256, and MD5 algorithms are deprecated in this release.

As a result of this deprecation, Oracle recommends that you review your network encryption and integrity configuration to check if you have specified any of the deprecated weak algorithms.

To transition your Oracle Database environment to use stronger algorithms, download and install the patch described in My Oracle Support note 2118136.2.