As of Oracle Database 12c, OCI session pooling enables multiple threads of an application to use a dynamically managed set of pre-created database sessions. In connection pooling, the pool element is a connection, but in session pooling, the pool element is a session. Oracle Database continually reuses the sessions in the session pool to form nearly permanent channels to the instances, thus saving the overhead of creating and closing sessions every time applications need them.
Run-time connection load balancing is enabled by default in an Oracle Database 11g release 11.1, or later, client communicating with a server of Oracle Database 10g release 10.2, or later. For Oracle RAC environments, session pools use service metrics received from the Oracle RAC load balancing advisoryFoot 1 through Fast Application Notification (FAN) events to balance application session requests. The work requests coming into the session pool can be distributed across the instances of Oracle RAC offering a service, using the current service performance.
Configuring OCI Clients to Receive Load Balancing Advisory FAN Events
For Oracle RAC environments, session pools use service metrics received from the Oracle RAC load balancing advisory through Fast Application Notification (FAN) events to balance application session requests. To enable your application to receive the service metrics based on the service time, ensure that you configure FAN, the load balancing advisory goal (-rlbgoal parameter), and the connection load balancing goal (-clbgoal parameter) for a service that is used by the session pool, as shown in the following example:
$ srvctl modify service -db crm -service ociapp.example.com -rlbgoal SERVICE_TIME
-clbgoal SHORT -notification TRUE
See Also:
Oracle Call Interface Programmer's Guide for more information about OCI
Footnote Legend
Footnote 1:Run-time connection load balancing is basically routing work requests to sessions in a session pool that can best serve the work. It comes into effect when selecting a session from an existing session pool. Thus, run-time connection load balancing is a very frequent activity.