{"id":634,"date":"2012-04-17T16:46:18","date_gmt":"2012-04-17T15:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/oneshare\/?p=634"},"modified":"2012-11-19T12:48:37","modified_gmt":"2012-11-19T11:48:37","slug":"oracle-databases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/oneshare\/2012\/04\/17\/oracle-databases\/","title":{"rendered":"Oracle Databases"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday, I was given access to the data cache held by iSolutions here. Well, a view on to it. And it doesn’t have every piece of data we requested (first name, last name, e-mail address, faculty, supervisor, degree title, year of degree and photo), let alone all of the data the University holds (which is our eventual goal).<\/p>\n

That aside, I was given the keys to dad’s car and was about to set off on a wild data-ride when I drove straight into the garage door. I know from experience that iSolutions use Oracle as their database system; what I didn’t know is how hard this is to access.<\/p>\n

At first I thought maybe I should download a client so I can interrogate my view of the database, before installing the necessary PHP extension to access it programmatically. I found out this client (or part of it) is called SQL*Plus and headed over to the Oracle client download page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, after agreeing to the license and clicking the download link, I was hit with this page:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I tried a few different links, I tried going to the registration page, but everything to do with the Oracle sign on process was giving me this error page. “Well forget this client”, I thought to myself, “I’ll just interact with Oracle through PHP”.<\/p>\n

Easier said than done!<\/p>\n

Obviously my early code didn’t work:<\/p>\n

$conn = oci_connect('hr', 'welcome', 'localhost\/XE');<\/code><\/p>\n

The oracle extension isn’t installed yet, so PHP doesn’t know what oci_connect<\/tt> is. “I’ve enabled MySQL before, it can’t be that much harder to enable Oracle”, I confidently muttered. I followed a few instructions:<\/p>\n

Installing Oracle libraries for PHP5 on Ubuntu Server 8.04<\/a><\/code><\/p>\n

How To Install Oracle XE in Ubuntu 64 Bit<\/a>
\n <\/code><\/p>\n

The main problem I encountered is that in all cases, I have to download the Oracle client. Except I can’t get past that sign-on page! The first tutorial has a solution: add the Oracle OSS repository<\/a> to your source list and type\u00a0sudo apt-get install oracle-xe-client<\/tt>. Seems simple, except the repository only has binaries for the x86 version of the client, which apt-get<\/tt> refuses to install if you have an 64-bit installation of Ubuntu \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

The second tutorial explains how to manually install the .deb<\/em> packages after wget<\/tt>ting them from the repository. It was going well until I ran sudo pecl install oci8, and received the following error:<\/p>\n

\/usr\/bin\/ld: skipping incompatible \/usr\/lib\/oracle\/xe\/app\/oracle\/product\/10.2.0\/client\/lib\/libclntsh.so when searching for -lclntsh
\n\/usr\/bin\/ld: cannot find -lclntsh<\/code><\/p>\n

I cannot find any information about why this doesn’t work, but I imagine it is because that clntsh<\/em> library is for version 10.2.0 of the client and maybe oci8 expects something newer?<\/p>\n

My only solution is that I need to download the latest client and see if that works. While writing this post, it dawned on me that it’s a bit strange that the Oracle sign on page was not working, so I tried it in a different browser. It turns out that the Oracle sign on page is incompatible with Opera<\/a>, which is a shame.<\/p>\n

I started following “something”<\/a> but realised it was just making things more complicated and decided to just follow the instructions on the Ubuntu PHP Oracle page<\/a>. And it works! Now I can connect PHP to Oracle.<\/p>\n

Lessons Learned<\/h2>\n
    \n
  1. Just follow the instructions on\u00a0https:\/\/help.ubuntu.com\/community\/PHPOracle<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  2. Don’t use Opera to download from the oracle site, because their single sign on<\/a> page does not work.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Yesterday, I was given access to the data cache held by iSolutions here. Well, a view on to it. And it doesn’t have every piece of data we requested (first name, last name, e-mail address, faculty, supervisor, degree title, year …<\/p>\n

    Oracle Databases<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":82342,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15428],"tags":[15410,15427,15430,15425,369,138],"class_list":["post-634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-student-dashboard","tag-studash","tag-client","tag-oci8","tag-opera","tag-oracle","tag-php"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/oneshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/oneshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/oneshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/oneshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/82342"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/oneshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/oneshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":962,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/oneshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions\/962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/oneshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/oneshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/oneshare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}