| Utility/Main Features | Sub-Feature | Oracle8 | Oracle8i |
| RMAN | Interactively create and run scripts | Did not support Wizards | Supports wizards for creating and executing scripts |
| Fast-Start Fault Recovery | Had a similar feature “Transparent Application Failover,” but worked only on Oracle Parallel Server | Feature introduced within Oracle8i | |
| Fast-Start Fault Recovery | Fast-Checkpointing | Not supported | This feature reduces the number of data buffers/blocks that are read during recovery. |
| Fast-Start Fault Recovery | On-Demand Rollback | Not supported | This new feature allows recovering only those records from dead transactions, which are required by a new transaction. This helps in faster recovery. |
| Parallel Rollback | Not supported | This new feature performs rollback of data in parallel. | |
| Supported standby database, but the archived redo logs had to be copied and applied manually from the primary production database to the standby database. | The standby database is automated, so the archived redo log files are moved to the standby database and applied by Oracle8i database. | ||
| Automated Standby Database | |||
| Read-Only Database | Not supported, the standby database was not open to the users. | This new feature allows the users to access a standby database in a read-only manner. This helps in reducing the load of long queries and reports from the production database to a standby read-only{{{fix to avoid break}}}database. | |
| Export/Import utility | Query criteria for export | Not supported | This new feature allows the specification of criteria for selecting records for a table to be unloaded by Export. |
| Export/Import utility | Multiple dump files and dump tapes | Not supported | This new feature allows the user to specify multiple larger dump files and dump tapes to export the database. This allows users to circumvent the previous 2GB limit for export dump files. |
| Export/Import utility | LOB and objects | Not supported | This new feature allows the user to export and import LOB data and objects. |
| Repairing database | DBMS_REPAIR | Not supported | Oracle8i includes a new package, DBMS_REPAIR, which helps detect and repair block corruption on tables, indexes, and other objects. |
| Reading redo logs | LogMiner | Not supported | LogMiner, a new feature, is a fully relational tool which allows redo log files to be read, analyzed, and interpreted by the user using SQL. This is helpful, because the log files contain all of the data needed to perform database recovery. |
| Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) | Supported | Some new features have been added to it | |
| Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) | Availability on all platforms | Supported only on MS Windows NT | Version 2.0 is Java based, hence it is available on all platforms. |