I had referred to Active GridLink for RAC in my blog yesterday and since then got several questions on this topic. So I decided to re-visit Active GridLink. With the release of version 11g, Oracle WebLogic Server started to provide strong support for the Real Application Clusters (RAC) features in Oracle Database 11g, minimizing database access time while allowing transparent access to rich pooling management functions that maximizes both connection performance and availability. WebLogic is the only application server in the marketplace which has been fully integrated and certified with Oracle Database RAC 11g without losing any rich functionality. Active GridLink provides Fast Connection Failover (FCF), Runtime Connection Load-Balancing (RCLB), and RAC instance graceful shutdown. With the key foundation for providing deeper integration with Oracle RAC, this single data source implementation in Oracle WebLogic Server supports the full and unrestricted use of database services as the connection target for a data source.

For more details and to understand how our customer NEC leverages this capability, read the whitepapers on this topic.