The following features are new in this release:

• Support for PIDL and PCTAS on Varray and ADT Columns. For more information, see the Parallel Queries with Oracle Objects section.

• Collation Support for Object Types— A relational column created to store a user-defined type (UDT) attribute inherits the UDT's collation property. As such, an object column can be created under any user-level and table-level collation. However, since all UDTs in Oracle Database 12c release 2 (12.2.0.1) are created using the pseudo-collation USING_NLS_COMP, relevant columns for the UDT attributes are created with this collation property as well. The only collation allowed is USING_NLS_COMP.

This section lists the features deprecated in Oracle Database 12c release 2 (12.2.0.1).

• REFs to object tables using primary keys as object identifiers. Users must not create REF columns/attributes scoped to or having REFERENCES constraints with any such table. Users must use system-generated object identifiers generated using sys_guid() sql functions for object tables.

• NESTED TABLE stored as index-organized table (IOT)

• ALTER TYPE … INVALIDATE has been deprecated. You must use ALTER TYPE ... CASCADE instead.

This section lists the features desupported in Oracle Database 12c release 2 (12.2.0.1).

• Desupport of Advanced Replication. Multi-master based replication of objects is desupported. Oracle strongly recommends you to use Oracle Logical Standby and Oracle Golden Gate that uses log-based replication. For more information, refer to Replication Support for Objects.

• Desupport of SQLJ Support Inside Oracle Database