Internals of Oracle driver

Question

Where I can find information how Oracle performs communication with database on the lowest level, I mean at level of sockets? I want to write a program(without jdbc) that simply perform some statement(select or create). So I need to know what protocol Oracle uses to do this.

Answer 1

Why would you want / need to eliminate JDBC for this? This is exactly why JDBC exists, and why Oracle provides JDBC drivers for their databases. Even if there would exist some low-level protocol documentation for what you're trying to do, you'd have no guarantee of it being portable between Oracle releases, etc.

I'm going to make an assumption in that you're looking to eliminate an install of the Oracle client. If this is the case, make sure you're using the type 4 JDBC driver, or Oracle's "thin" driver - available at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/jdbc-112010-090769.html. This does exactly what you're probably trying to do - connecting to the Oracle database through pure Java, without requiring any other installed software - though it technically will still be JDBC.

If you're still insistent on proceeding without any Oracle client components (even including just the Oracle type 4 JDBC driver), here are a few additional links that may be of interest:

• Wire-Level Network Protocol Specification for Oracle? Including:

Where can I get Oracle’s Wire-Level Protocol Specification?

Oracle. Outside of Oracle, only a few wire-level driver vendors have it. Likewise, unlike the driver vendors, Oracle is the only one with permission to distribute it. And, before you ask, I’ve never seen the specification myself. All of my protocol knowledge is based on years of research and significant trial-and-error.

• SibylNet: An Open Source Wire-level Client Library for Oracle

This project is (was) available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/sibylnet/ , but hasn't seen any updates since 2008-10-07, and doesn't have any files or source code available.