Installing Oracle for PHP

Note: This page is a work-in-progress. Feedback and suggested improvements are welcome. Please join the discussion on moodle.org or use the page comments.

• http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/notes/technote_php_instant.html
• http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=65488#p308002 (with attached html document)
• http://es.php.net/oci8

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Important Note: Don't forget to enable this variable in your php.ini (or .htaccess) file:

(else, all your data will be escaped following MySQL rules, that are incorrect for Oracle)

   magic_quotes_sybase = On

Broken versions of OCI8 driver

PHP v5.2.4 (and perhaps v5.2.3 as well) have shipped with a bug in the OCI8 driver that leaks statement handles. The version of the OCI8 driver with the bug is v1.2.4. Possible workarounds:

• Downgrade to PHP v5.2.1 (reported to work)
• Downgrade only the oci8 driver to the one included in PHP 5.2.1 (does this work?)
• If you are on linux and/or can compile PECL extensions, install an older OCI8 driver (v1.2.3 seems to work) from the PECL repository http://pecl.php.net/package/oci8

More information at

• http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=42496 -- tracking the PHP OCI8 bug
• http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-11429 -- diagnostics on the Moodle side

Installing Moodle on Windows with Oracle Express Edition

Introduction

This section explains how to install Moodle with Oracle Express Edition on Windows. I'm using it for debugging purpose. It's definitively not a production environment. The goal is to setup easily and quickly a Moodle/Windows/Oracle environment.

Install Oracle

Download Oracle Express Edition on Oracle web site.
Install it.
Access to the oracle console (http://127.0.0.1:8080/apex). Login: SYS Password: the_one_you_entered_during_the_installation
Create a new user and give it all rights (including DBA).
Note: Oracle Express Edition is limited at one database called 'XE'.

Set up your oracle extension

This document does not explain how to setup apache/php for Oracle. You can have more information on Oracle Documentation. On my own machine I used my WAMP installation (Wampserver 2.0) which allowed me to activate all oracle extensions in few clicks (php_oci8, php_oracle, php_pdo_oci, php_pdo_oci8).

Install Moodle

On the database setup page:
Driver: Oracle oci8
Host: empty the field
Database: //localhost:1521/XE
User: the user that you created
Password: the password you gave to the user

Related links

Installing MSSQL for PHP