Oracle Class Library (OCL) provides native connectivity to the Oracle database server. OCL uses Oracle Call Interface (OCI) directly that allows to create lightweight and fast applications working with Oracle. Oracle Class Library encapsulates OCI calls in high-level classes that allows to hide the complexity of using OCI directly and keep perfomance and all abilities of native routines. With OCL you can use the power and flexibility of SQL in your application programs without any restrictions.

OCL contains classes to control connection, execute SQL statements, store and process result rows of queries and some common classes useful for developing database applications. All classes have intuitive, easy to use interface.

OCL is written with ANSI C++ and uses Standard C++ Library only, what allows you to port your application easily to another platform.

Oracle Class Library provides easiness in using from Pro*C/C++ and power of Oracle Call Interface.

OCL allows you to:

• design and develop highly customized database applications
• improve performance of data processing in your applications
• compile the same application for different platforms
• automatically convert between Oracle internal datatypes and high-level language datatypes
• fetch rows quickly
• cache result rows in memory to process them later
• use arrays as input and output program variables
• call stored procedures easily
• handle errors
• use LONG fields in the database