Oracle Directory Naming and Internet Directory

1. Lack of Standards Compliance
   • Oracle Names used a proprietary naming resolution mechanism, making it incompatible with industry-standard directory services like LDAP.
   • As enterprises moved toward open standards, Oracle adopted LDAP-based solutions to ensure compatibility and interoperability.
2. Limited Scalability
   • Oracle Names was not designed for large, enterprise-scale environments with hundreds or thousands of services.
   • It faced performance bottlenecks and administrative complexity as the number of databases and clients increased.
3. No Support for Advanced Security Models
   • It lacked fine-grained security controls and robust authentication mechanisms such as SSL/TLS, Kerberos, or Enterprise User Security (EUS).
   • Newer directory services like OID provided stronger encryption and role-based access control.
4. Complex and Manual Administration
   • Oracle Names required manual configuration of names servers and entries.
   • It did not support centralized management or automated service registration as effectively as OID/OUD.
5. Poor Integration with Enterprise Infrastructure
   • Oracle Names was difficult to integrate with existing enterprise directories like Active Directory, Sun Directory Server, or OpenLDAP.
   • OID was built on LDAP, enabling integration with corporate identity management systems.
6. Oracle's Move Toward Unified Naming Architecture
   • Oracle promoted a unified Net Services architecture using LDAP-compliant directories to reduce duplication of configuration and increase consistency across applications.
   • This unified approach simplified administration of large distributed Oracle environments.
7. Desupport Announcement
   • Oracle explicitly stated that Oracle Names would be deprecated in 9i and desupported entirely in subsequent releases, encouraging customers to migrate to directory naming using OID or OUD.

• Net Service Names stored in Oracle Internet Directory (OID)
• or the more modern Oracle Unified Directory (OUD)
• both of which support:
  • centralized configuration
  • dynamic service registration (with service aliases)
  • LDAP-compliant naming resolution

1. using directory naming or
2. migrating an existing Oracle Names configuration to directory naming^[1].

SQL> SELECT name from v$parameter 
		WHERE isdeprecated = 'TRUE' ORDER BY name;

active_instance_count
background_dump_dest
buffer_pool_keep
buffer_pool_recycle
commit_write
cursor_space_for_time
fast_start_io_target
global_context_pool_size
instance_groups
lock_name_space
log_archive_start
max_enabled_roles
parallel_automatic_tuning
parallel_io_cap_enabled
parallel_server
parallel_server_instances
plsql_v2_compatibility
remote_os_authent
resource_manager_cpu_allocation
sec_case_sensitive_logon
serial_reuse
sql_trace
standby_archive_dest
user_dump_dest