What's new in this release?

Support and Certifications

Changes since 8.0.2 GA

• Driver Enhancements
  • The default version of the OpenSSL library has been upgraded to 3.5.6. As part of this upgrade, earlier version of the OpenSSL 3.0 library continues to be supported to provide the best protection for your data. The upgrade is available in the following OpenSSL library files:
    • Windows: ivopenssl.dll and ddopenssl.dll
    • Unix: ivopenssl.so and ddopenssl.so
  • The driver has been enhanced to support both unencrypted and encrypted connections to the LDAP server. After connecting to the LDAP server, the driver retrieves the necessary connection details from it and then connects to the database server. See Using LDAP for details.
  • The driver has been enhanced to support authentication using Microsoft Entra ID (Azure Active Directory) access tokens. You can configure this authentication using the updated Authentication Method (AuthenticationMethod) connection option and the new Entra Access Token (EntraAccessToken) connection option. See Entra ID access token authentication for details.
  • The driver is now compiled with a Visual Studio 2022 compiler for the Windows platforms. As a result, you must have Microsoft Visual C/C++ runtime version 14.40.33810 or higher on your machine to run the driver.
  • The driver has been enhanced to support the TLSv1.3 cryptographic protocol. As part of this enhancement, the default cryptographic protocols enabled by the driver have been updated to TLSv1.3 and TLSv1.2. See Crypto Protocol Version for more information.
  • The default version of the OpenSSL library has been upgraded to 3.0. As part of this upgrade, earlier versions of the OpenSSL library are no longer supported to provide the best protection for your data. The upgrade is available in the following OpenSSL library files: xxopenssl30.dll (for Windows) and xxopenssl30.so [.sl] (for UNIX/Linux).

    The OpenSSL 3.0 library uses a set of shared libraries called providers to implement different types of cryptographic algorithms. The driver supports the following OpenSSL 3.0 providers: FIPS and default. See TLS/SSL server authentication and TLS/SSL client authentication for details.

  • The driver has been enhanced to support the Windows certificate store for TLS/SSL server authentication. See TLS/SSL server authentication for details.
  • The driver has been enhanced to support TLS/SSL server authentication for the applications deployed in a serverless environment. The driver stores the TLS/SSL certificates in memory and lets applications use TLS/SSL server authentication without storing the truststore file on the disk. To use this enhancement, specify the content of the certificate in the refreshed Trust Store (Truststore) connection option or the new SQL_COPT_INMEMORY_TRUSTSTORECERT pre-connection attribute. See Trust Store and Using SQL_COPT_INMEMORY_TRUSTSTORECERT for details.

  • The driver has been enhanced with the new BatchFailureReturnsError option, which determines the behavior of the driver when encountering an error in a parameter array insert with bulk load disabled. For details, see Batch Failure Returns Error.

  • A Password Encryption Tool, called ddencpwd, is now included with the product package. It encrypts passwords for secure handling in connection strings and odbc.ini files. At connection, the driver decrypts these passwords and passes them to the data source as required. See Password Encryption Tool (UNIX/Linux only) for details.
  • The driver has been enhanced to support distributed transactions. It implements the XA interface to enable support for distributed transactions. For details, see XA interface support.
  • The driver has been enhanced to support extended connection failover for the connections established using the TNSNAMES.ORA file. See Configuring failover using the TNSNAMES.ORA file for details.
  • The driver has been enhanced to include timestamp in the internal packet logs by default. If you want to disable the timestamp logging in packet logs, set PacketLoggingOptions=1. The internal packet logging is not enabled by default. To enable it, set EnablePacketLogging=1.
  • The driver has been enhanced to support Oracle Wallet Password Stores. When this feature is enabled, the driver retrieves database credentials from an Oracle Wallet to be used for authentication to the server. The driver has also been enhanced with the new Credentials Wallet Entry (CredentialsWalletEntry), Credentials Wallet Path (CredentialsWalletPath), Wallet Password (CredentialsWalletPassword) options, which allow you to configure this feature. See Oracle Wallet Password Store for details.
  • On Windows and UNIX/Linux, the driver has been enhanced to support using connection information stored in an LDAP entry to establish a connection. You can configure the driver to use LDAP with the new LDAP Distinguished Name (LDAPDistinguishedName) option and refreshed Host (HostName) and Port Number (PortNumber) options. For details, see Using LDAP.
  • The Driver Manager for UNIX/Linux has been enhanced to support setting the Unicode encoding type for applications on a per connection basis. By passing a value for the SQL_ATTR_APP_UNICODE_TYPE attribute using SQLSetConnectAttr, your application can specify the encoding at connection. This allows your application to pass both UTF-8 and UTF-16 encoded strings with a single environment handle.

    Refer to Driver Manager and Unicode encoding on UNIX/Linux in Progress DataDirect for ODBC Drivers Reference for details.

  • On Windows and UNIX/Linux, the driver has been enhanced to support connecting through Oracle Connection Manager. See Oracle Connection Manager for details.
  • The driver has been enhanced to support the following new statement attributes that allow you to override connection option settings for an individual statement:
    • SQL_ATTR_BULK_LOAD_ENABLED statement attribute overrides the EnableBulkLoad option
    • SQL_ATTR_IANA_APP_CODE_PAGE statement attribute overrides the IANAAppCodePage option

    See Enable Bulk Load and IANAAppCodePage for details.

  • On Windows and UNIX/Linux, the driver has been enhanced to support connecting to a proxy server through an HTTP connection. HTTP proxy support is configurable with five new connection options. See Proxy Host, Proxy Mode, Proxy Password, Proxy Port, and Proxy User for details.
  • The driver has been enhanced with the new Impersonate User connection option that allows you to specify the proxy user ID used for impersonation. The user ID specified using this option determines your permissions and identity when executing queries. See Impersonate User for details.
  • The driver has been enhanced to support using the default Service Name or SID specified in the server-side listener.ora file. See Service Name, SID, and TNSNames File for details.
  • The driver has been enhanced to support Oracle Database Vault.
  • The driver has been enhanced to support the Oracle Database Exadata Cloud Service.
• Changed Behavior
  • The TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.0 cryptographic protocols are now disabled by default and have been removed as selectable values for the Crypto Protocol Version (CryptoProtocolVersion) option on the Setup dialog. These protocols are no longer considered secure and, therefore, are no longer recommended for use. However, the driver still supports TLSv1.1 and TLSv1.0 for legacy servers that do not support more secure protocols. See Crypto Protocol Version for more information.
  • The valid value for the Authentication Method (AuthenticationMethod) option for retrieving credential information from Oracle Wallet password stores has been changed from 14 to 16. To support existing configurations of the driver, the original value, 14, will continue to be supported for this version of the driver. See Authentication Method for details.
  • The Allowed OpenSSL Versions (AllowedOpenSSLVersions) connection option has been deprecated.
  • The product no longer includes version 1.1.1 of the OpenSSL library. The library will reach the end of its product life cycle in September 2023 and will not receive any security updates after that. Note that continuing to use the library after September 2023 can potentially expose you to security vulnerabilities.
    Note: As a result of this change, when installing a new version of the product, the installer program will automatically remove version 1.1.1 of the library from the install directory, which will impact all the DataDirect ODBC drivers installed on a machine. Therefore, if you are using multiple drivers, upgrade all your drivers to the latest version.
  • The product no longer includes version 1.0.2 of the OpenSSL library. The library has reached the end of its product life cycle and is not receiving security updates anymore. Note that continuing to use the library could potentially expose you to security vulnerabilities.
    Note: As a result of this change, when installing a new version of the driver, the installer program will automatically remove version 1.0.2 of the library from the install directory.
  • The crypto protocol versions prior to TLSv1 are no longer supported.
  • On the GUI, proxy-related options have been moved from the General tab to the new Proxy tab.
  • The setting of the Array Size option can now be overridden by specifying the number of rows to fetch using the SQL_ATTR_ROW_ARRAY_SIZE statement attribute. See Array Size for details.

Changes for 8.0.2 GA

• Driver Enhancements
  • Support for Oracle Wallet, including:
    • Oracle Wallet SSL Authentication
    • Using Oracle Wallet as a keystore or truststore for SSL data encryption.

    See Oracle Wallet SSL Authentication and Using Oracle Wallet as a keystore for details.

  • The driver has been certified to use Oracle Internet Directory as a means to store authentication information. See Oracle Internet Directory (OID) for details.
  • The Oracle driver has been enhanced to support the following new data integrity algorithms for Oracle 12c and higher: SHA256, SHA384, SHA512. To use these algorithms, specify their values using the Data Integrity Types connection option and enable data integrity checks with the Data Integrity Level connection option. See Data Integrity Types and Data Integrity Level for details.
  • The maximum supported length of identifiers has been increased to 128 bytes when connecting to Oracle 12c R2 (12.2) databases. This change has been implemented to reflect the new maximum length supported by the server.
• Changed Behavior
  • The default value for the Data Integrity Types connection option has changed to the following:

    MD5,SHA1,SHA256,SHA384,SHA512

    See Data Integrity Types for details.

Changes for 8.0.1 GA

• Driver Enhancements
  • Support for the Oracle 12 and 12a authentication protocols, which provide improved security.
  • Support for returning implicit result sets from stored procedures.
  • The driver is now compiled using Visual Studio 2015 for improved security.
  • The new SDU Size connection option allows you to specify the size in bytes of the Session Data Unit (SDU) that the driver requests when connecting to the server. See SDU Size for details.
  • The new Support Binary XML connection option enables the driver to support XMLType with binary storage on servers running Oracle 12c and higher. See Support Binary XML for details.
  • The new LOB Prefetch Size connection option allows you to specify the size of prefetch data the driver returns for BLOBs and CLOBs for Oracle database versions 12.1.0.1 and higher. With LOB prefetch enabled, the driver can return LOB meta-data and the beginning of LOB data along with the LOB locator during a fetch operation. This can have significant performance impact, especially for small LOBs which can potentially be entirely prefetched, because the data is available without having to go through the LOB protocol. See LOB Prefetch Size for details.
• Changed Behavior
  • The Enable N-CHAR Support connection option has been deprecated, and the driver behavior has been updated to always provide support for the N-types NCHAR, NVARCHAR2 and NCLOB. For compatibility purposes, the EnableNcharSupport attribute can still be manually specified for this release, but will be deprecated in subsequent versions of the product. See Enable N-CHAR Support and for details.
  • The Enable Timestamp with Timezone connection option has been deprecated, and the driver behavior has been updated to always expose timestamps with timezones to the application. For compatibility purposes, the EnableTimestampwithTimezone attribute can still be manually specified for this release, but it will be deprecated in subsequent versions of the product. See Enable Timestamp with Timezone for details.
  • The default value for the Data Integrity Level connection option has been updated to 1 (Accepted). By default, a data integrity check can now be made on data sent between the driver and the database server, if the server request or requires it. This change allows the driver to connect to servers requiring Oracle Advanced Security data integrity checks using the default configuration. See Data Integrity Level for details.
  • The default value for the Encryption Level connection option has been updated to 1 (Accepted). By default, encryption is now used on data sent between the driver and the database server if the database server requests or requires it. This change allows the driver to connect to servers requiring Oracle Advanced Security encryption using the default configuration. See Encryption Level for details.