What's new in Oracle 11g services' behavior?

In contrast to previous Oracle releases, Oracle 11g has slightly enhanced its service behavior when a RAC database or an instance is stopped using either SRVCTL or the SQL shutdown command. In a similar situation, when the services are started on some remote nodes, the instance startup on the local node will autostart the service on it.

Now, let's have a closer look at the following cluster prime features:

• Scalability (Load Balancing)

• High Availability (Failover)

Scalability (Load Balancing)

The Oracle Load Balancing feature provides the facility to scale the application workload across available instances of an RAC database. It supports two types of load balancing features—Client Side Connect Time Load Balance and Server Side Listener Connection Load Balance.

Client Side Connect Time Load Balance

The Client Side Connect Time Load Balance feature is enabled by specifying the LOAD_BALANCE=YES|ON|TRUE clause, in the connection configuration file...