.. _vector.oci:

Oracle Spatial
==============

.. shortname:: OCI

.. build_dependencies:: OCI library

This driver supports reading and writing data in Oracle Spatial (8.1.7
or later) Object-Relational format. The Oracle Spatial driver is not
normally built into OGR, but may be built in on platforms where the
Oracle client libraries are available.

When opening a database, its name should be specified in the form
"OCI:userid/password@database_instance:table,table". The list of tables
is optional. The database_instance portion may be omitted when accessing
the default local database instance. See the
`Oracle Help Center <https://docs.oracle.com/search/?q=oci%20driver>`_
for more information about the OCI driver.

If the list of tables is not provided, then all tables appearing in
ALL_SDO_GEOM_METADATA will be treated by OGR as layers with the table
names as the layer names. Non-spatial tables or spatial tables not
listed in the ALL_SDO_GEOM_METADATA view [#]_ are not accessible unless
explicitly listed in the datasource name. Even in databases where all
desired layers are in the ALL_SDO_GEOM_METADATA view, it may be
desirable to list only the tables to be used as this can substantially
reduce initialization time in databases with many tables.

If the table has an integer column called OGR_FID it will be used as the
feature id by OGR (and it will not appear as a regular attribute). When
loading data into Oracle Spatial OGR will always create the OGR_FID
field.

When reading data from one or more views, the view names should be
specified in the form
"OCI:userid/password@database_instance:view,view". What is written
above regarding tables, applies to views as well.

.. [#] It is the database user that is responsible for updating the
   ALL_SDO_GEOM_METADATA view, by inserting an appropriate row into the
   USER_SDO_GEOM_METADATA view. This is why it is possible that the
   table you want to read from is not listed in the
   ALL_SDO_GEOM_METADATA.

Driver capabilities
-------------------

.. supports_create::

.. supports_georeferencing::

SQL Issues
----------

By default, the Oracle driver passes SQL statements directly to Oracle
rather than evaluating them internally when using the ExecuteSQL() call
on the OGRDataSource, or the -sql command option to ogr2ogr. Attribute
query expressions are also passed through to Oracle.

As well two special commands are supported via the ExecuteSQL()
interface. These are "**DELLAYER:<table_name>**" to delete a layer, and
"**VALLAYER:<table_name>**" to apply the SDO_GEOM.VALIDATE_GEOMETRY()
check to a layer. Internally these pseudo-commands are translated into
more complex SQL commands for Oracle.

It is also possible to request the driver to handle SQL commands with
:ref:`OGR SQL <ogr_sql_dialect>` engine, by passing **"OGRSQL"**
string to the ExecuteSQL() method, as name of the SQL dialect.

Caveats
-------

-  The type recognition logic is currently somewhat impoverished. No
   effort is made to preserve real width information for integer and
   real fields.
-  Various types such as objects, and BLOBs in Oracle will be completely
   ignored by OGR.
-  Currently the OGR transaction semantics are not properly mapped onto
   transaction semantics in Oracle.
-  If an attribute called OGR_FID exists in the schema for tables being
   read, it will be used as the FID. Random (FID based) reads on tables
   without an identified (and indexed) FID field can be very slow. To
   force use of a particular field name the :config:`OCI_FID`
   configuration option (e.g. environment variable) can be set to the
   target field name.
-  Curved geometry types are converted to linestrings or linear rings in
   six degree segments when reading. The driver has no support for
   writing curved geometries.
-  There is no support for point cloud (SDO_PC), TIN (SDO_TIN) and
   annotation text data types in Oracle Spatial.
-  It might be necessary to define the environment variable NLS_LANG to
   "American_America.UTF8" to avoid issues with floating point numbers
   being truncated to integer on non-English environments.
-  For developers: when running the driver under the memory error
   detection tool Valgrind, specifying the database_instance, typically
   to localhost, or with the TWO_TASK environment variable seems to be
   compulsory, otherwise "TNS:permission denied" errors will be
   reported)
-  The logic for finding the specified table or view first checks
   whether a table with the given name exists, then a view, and then
   tries again with quoted names. This may result in one or more errors
   of the following type written to the output: "ORA-04043: object
   <object_name> does not exist", even if the object actually is found
   later on.

Creation Issues
---------------

The Oracle Spatial driver does not support creation of new datasets
(database instances), but it does allow creation of new layers within an
existing database.

Upon closing the OGRDataSource newly created layers will have a spatial
index automatically built. At this point the USER_SDO_GEOM_METADATA
table will also be updated with bounds for the table based on the
features that have actually been written. One consequence of this is
that once a layer has been loaded it is generally not possible to load
additional features outside the original extents without manually
modifying the DIMINFO information in USER_SDO_GEOM_METADATA and
rebuilding the spatial index.

Configuration options
---------------------

|about-config-options|
The following configuration options are available:

-  .. config:: OCI_FID
      :default: OGR_FID

      Sets the name of the field to be used as the FID.

Layer Creation Options
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

|about-layer-creation-options|
The following layer creation options are supported:

-  .. lco:: OVERWRITE
      :choices: YES, NO
      :default: NO

      This may be "YES" to force an existing layer (=table)
      of the same desired name to be destroyed before creating the
      requested layer.

-  .. lco:: TRUNCATE
      :choices: YES, NO
      :default: NO

      This may be "YES" to force the existing table to be
      reused, but to first truncate all records in the table, preserving
      indexes or dependencies.

-  .. lco:: LAUNDER
      :choices: YES, NO
      :default: NO

      This may be "YES" to force new fields created on this
      layer to have their field names "laundered" into a form more
      compatible with Oracle. This converts to upper case and converts some
      special characters like "-" and "#" to "_".

-  .. lco:: PRECISION
      :choices: YES, NO
      :default: YES

      This may be "YES" to force new fields created on this
      layer to try and represent the width and precision information, if
      available using NUMBER(width,precision) or VARCHAR2(width) types. If
      "NO" then the types NUMBER, INTEGER and VARCHAR2 will be used
      instead.

-  .. lco:: DIM
      :choices: 2, 3

      This may be set to 2 or 3 to force the dimension of the
      created layer. Prior to GDAL 2.2, 3 is used by default. Starting with
      GDAL 2.2, the dimension of the layer geometry type is used by
      default.

-  .. lco:: SPATIAL_INDEX
      :choices: YES, NO

      This may be set to NO to disable creation of a
      spatial index when a layer load is complete. By default an index is
      created if any of the layer features have valid geometries. The
      default is "YES". Note: option was called INDEX in releases before
      GDAL 2

-  .. lco:: INDEX_PARAMETERS

      This may be set to pass creation parameters
      when the spatial index is created. For instance setting
      :lco:`INDEX_PARAMETERS` to ``SDO_RTR_PCTFREE=0`` would cause the rtree index to
      be created without any empty space. By default no parameters are
      passed causing a default R-Tree spatial index to be created.

-  .. lco:: ADD_LAYER_GTYPE
      :choices: YES, NO
      :default: YES

      This may be
      set to NO to disable the constraints on the geometry type in the
      spatial index, through the layer_gtype keyword in the PARAMETERS
      clause of the CREATE INDEX. Layers of type MultiPoint,
      MultiLineString or MultiPolygon will also accept single geometry type
      (Point, LineString, Polygon).

-  .. lco:: DIMINFO_X

      This may be set to xmin,xmax,xres values to control
      the X dimension info written into the USER_SDO_GEOM_METADATA table.
      By default extents are collected from the actual data written.

-  .. lco:: DIMINFO_Y

      This may be set to ymin,ymax,yres values to control
      the Y dimension info written into the USER_SDO_GEOM_METADATA table.
      By default extents are collected from the actual data written.

-  .. lco:: DIMINFO_Z

      This may be set to zmin,zmax,zres values to control
      the Z dimension info written into the USER_SDO_GEOM_METADATA table.
      By default fixed values of -100000,100000,0.002 are used for layers
      with a third dimension.

-  .. lco:: SRID

      By default this driver will attempt to find an existing row
      in the MDSYS.CS_SRS table with a well known text coordinate system
      exactly matching the one for this dataset. If one is not found, a new
      row will be added to this table. The SRID creation option allows the
      user to force use of an existing Oracle SRID item even it if does not
      exactly match the WKT the driver expects.

-  .. lco:: MULTI_LOAD
      :choices: YES, NO
      :default: YES

      If enabled new features will be created in groups of
      100 per SQL INSERT command, instead of each feature being a separate
      INSERT command. Having this enabled is the fastest way to load data
      quickly. Multi-load mode is enabled by default, and may be forced off
      for existing layers or for new layers by setting to NO. The number of
      rows in each group is defined by MULTI_LOAD_COUNT. To load one row at
      a time, set MULTI_LOAD to NO.

-  .. lco:: MULTI_LOAD_COUNT

      Define the number of features on each ARRAY
      INSERT command, instead of the default 100 item defined by
      :lco:`MULTI_LOAD`. Since each array insert will commit a transaction, this
      options shouldn't be combined with ogr2ogr "-gt N". Use "-gt
      unlimited" preferably when using MULTI_LOAD_COUNT. The default is
      100. If neither :lco:`MULTI_LOAD` nor :lco:`MULTI_LOAD_COUNT` are specified, then
      the loading happens in groups of 100 rows.

-  .. lco:: FIRST_ID

      Define the first numeric value of the id column on the
      first rows. It also works as a open option when used to append or
      update an existing dataset.

-  .. lco:: NO_LOGGING
      :choices: YES, NO

      Define that the table and the geometry will be create
      with nologging attributes.

-  .. lco:: LOADER_FILE

      If this option is set, all feature information will
      be written to a file suitable for use with SQL*Loader instead of
      inserted directly in the database. The layer itself is still created
      in the database immediately. The SQL*Loader support is experimental,
      and generally :lco:`MULTI_LOAD` enabled mode should be used instead when
      trying for optimal load performance.

-  .. lco:: GEOMETRY_NAME
      :default: ORA_GEOMETRY

      By default OGR creates new tables with the
      geometry column named ORA_GEOMETRY. If you wish to use a different
      name, it can be supplied with the GEOMETRY_NAME layer creation
      option.

-  .. lco:: TIMESTAMP_WITH_TIME_ZONE
      :choices: YES, NO
      :default: NO
      :since: 3.10.1

      Whether DateTime fields should be created with TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE
      Oracle type (otherwise without timezone).
      When creating a field, if it advertises a known or mixed time zone,
      TIMESTAMP_WITH_TIME_ZONE will default to YES, otherwise it will default to
      NO.

Layer Open Options
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

|about-open-options|
The following open options are supported:

-  .. oo:: FIRST_ID

      See Layer Create Options comments on :lco:`FIRST_ID`.

-  .. oo:: MULTI_LOAD

      See Layer Create Options comments on :lco:`MULTI_LOAD`.

-  .. oo:: MULTI_LOAD_COUNT

      See Layer Create Options comments on :lco:MULTI_LOAD_COUNT`.

-  .. oo:: WORKSPACE

      Define what user workspace to use.

Example
~~~~~~~

Simple translation of a shapefile into Oracle. The table 'ABC' will be
created with the features from abc.shp and attributes from abc.dbf.

::

   % ogr2ogr -f OCI OCI:warmerda/password@gdal800.dreadfest.com abc.shp

This example shows using ogrinfo to evaluate an SQL query statement
within Oracle. More sophisticated Oracle Spatial specific queries may
also be used via the -sql commandline switch to ogrinfo.

::

   ogrinfo -ro OCI:warmerda/password -sql "SELECT pop_1994 from canada where province_name = 'Alberta'"

This example shows hows to list information about an Oracle view.

::

   ogrinfo -ro -so OCI:username/password@host_name:port_number/service_name:MY_SCHEMA.MY_VIEW MY_SCHEMA.MY_VIEW

This example shows hows to convert certain columns from an Oracle view
to a GeoPackage file, explicitly assigning the layer name and the
coordinate reference system, and converting timestamps to UTC.

::

   ogr2ogr -f GPKG output.gpkg -nln new_layer_name -nlt POLYGON -s_srs EPSG:25832 -t_srs EPSG:25832 -dsco DATETIME_FORMAT=UTC OCI:username/password@host_name:port_number/service_name:MY_SCHEMA.MY_VIEW -sql "SELECT COLUMN_A, COLUMN_B, GEOMETRY FROM MY_SCHEMA.MY_VIEW"

Standalone plugin compilation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.. versionadded:: 3.10

While this driver may be built as part of a whole GDAL build, either in libgdal
itself, or as a plugin, it is also possible to only build this driver as a plugin,
against an already built libgdal.

The version of the GDAL sources used to build the driver must match the version
of the libgdal it is built against.

For example, from a "build_oci" directory under the root of the GDAL source tree:

::

    cmake -S ../ogr/ogrsf_frmts/oci -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/path/to/GDAL_installation_prefix -DOracle_ROOT=/path/to/instantclient_sdk_root
    cmake --build .


Note that such a plugin, when used against a libgdal not aware of it, will be
systematically loaded at GDAL driver initialization time, and will not benefit from
`deferred plugin loading capabilities <rfc-96>`. For that, libgdal itself must be built with the
CMake variable OGR_REGISTER_DRIVER_OCI_FOR_LATER_PLUGIN=ON set.

Credits
~~~~~~~

`SRC, LLC <http://www.extendthereach.com/>`__ for its financial support of
the initial development of this driver.

