Oracle has taken a pragmatic approach to delivering object functionality in the server. We deliver the needed functionality in phases, addressing the most important and clearly understood customer needs first, while giving customers sufficient time to absorb and effectively use the advances in the server. As a result, with Oracle9i, users can store business objects or multimedia data in the server, run Java objects in the server, and also easily extend the database for new kinds of data. In subsequent releases, we will carefully phase in features, such as inheritance. Our basic goal is to ensure operational viability and mission-critical readiness. To this end, we have eschewed an en masse addition of new features.

Comprehensive
In bringing object technology to the mainstream market, Oracle has adopted a comprehensive, company-wide effort for integrating the features in the Oracle9i server with application development products and tools. Various language interfaces (such as the SQL, PL/SQL™, Java (JDBC and SQLJ), the Oracle Precompilers™ and Oracle Objects for OLE™) all support objects. Oracle Designer™ and Oracle Developer™ provide tool-support for objects.
Oracle9i is functionally rich, containing a number of important technological advances, such as object types, object IDs, object views, an object cache, and Java in the database. These bring object technology to the mainstream market and are discussed in more detail in the next section.

Oracle 9i Solution
Having identified the kinds of business needs that Oracle aimed to solve and the strategy it adopted to solve them, this section follows with a description of the fundamental technical components of Oracle9i’s object functionality