Stream-Pipe Connections (UNIX)

A stream pipe is a UNIX interprocess communication (IPC) facility that allows processes on the same computer to communicate with each other. You can use stream-pipe connections any time that the client and the database server are on the same computer. For more information, see Network Protocol Entry and Shared-Memory and Stream-Pipe Communication (UNIX).

Stream-pipe connections have the following advantages:

• Unlike shared-memory connections, stream pipes do not pose the security risk of being overwritten or read by other programs that explicitly access the same portion of shared memory.
• Unlike shared-memory connections, stream-pipe connections allow distributed transactions between database servers that are on the same computer.

Stream-pipe connections have the following disadvantages:

• Stream-pipe connections might be slower than shared-memory connections on some computers.
• Stream pipes are not available on all platforms.
• When you use shared memory or stream pipes for client/server communications, the hostname entry is ignored.