Oracle Middleware 12c Product Setup- Data Source Grid Link or Multi Data Source

Recently I have been doing the setup of Oracle Middleware products where I came across two type of data sources that are recommended for RAC database connectivity. They are-

• Active Grid Link/Grid Link
• Multi Data Source

The question arises which one should I use and why?

And, the answer is - Active Grid Link (AGL)

Below are some facts provided by Oracle-

AGL is a superior implementation to Multi Data Source (MDS) for supporting RAC clusters. The following section provides additional information on the benefits of AGL data sources. AGL:

1. Requires one data source with a single URL. Multi data sources require a configuration with n generic data sources and a multi data source.
2. Eliminates a polling mechanism that can fail if one of the generic data sources is performing slowly.
3. Eliminates the need to manually add or delete a node to/from the cluster.
4. Provides a fast internal notification (out-of-band) when nodes are available so that connections are load-balanced to the new nodes using Oracle Notification Service (ONS).
5. Provides a fast internal notification when a node goes down so that connections are steered away from the node using ONS.
6. Provides load balancing advisories (LBA) so that new connections are created on the node with the least load, and the LBA information is also used for gravitation to move idle connections around based on load.
7. Provides affinity based on your XA transaction or your web session which may significantly improve performance.
8. Leverages all the advantages of HA configurations like DataGuard.

Reference-
https://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1213/wls/JDBCA/gridlink_datasources.htm#JDBCA373

https://docs.oracle.com/middleware/1213/wls/JDBCA/gridlink_datasources.htm#JDBCA652