Running a standalone apex listener on a 11gr2

This is just a cookbook version of a get to go of the oracle apex listener on a (windows) oracle 11gR2. Necessary resources comprise the (otn authenticated) installation and developer guide for apex listener (pdf) as well as the download area for apex listener (zip). Note that there is another installation and developer guide for apex listener that comes as html pages with the downloadable package. It does contain release notes as of august 2011 such that it should be more recent than the pdf version (as of February 2011). There also is an apex listener forum hosted by oracle, see the APEX Listener OTN Forum for any user driven discussion threads.

Me, i tested the standalone version of apex listener to be employed in some rapid prototyping developments, establishing an easy backend data connection for nowadays ajax-based web ui’s. Iff you go for some apex listener evaluations pointing to productive environments, do consider deploying the code with a standard j2ee container host.

The installation (and developer) guide is, as mostly with oracle, a well done step-by-step manual just to follow and this is the way i choosed to go as follows: Get the downloadable package from the resource above. It’s an archive versioned as apex_listener.1.1.3.243.11.40.zip to this date and contains a singleton war file along with some documentation.

I already have apex installed with this database instance and decided to extract the archive to E:\oracle\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1\apex-listener, pointed out as the “temp” directory, for whatever reason, in the installation guide. From this root directory i launched the war file along with some documented parameters to depict the deployment directory, the apex image directory, the http port to use, and so on:

E:\oracle\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1\apex-listener\temp>java -Dapex.home=E:\oracle\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1\apex-listener\runtime -Dapex.images=E:\oracle\product\11.2.0\dbhome_1\apex\images -Dapex.port=8585 -jar apex.war

The deployment directory, actually, is the place where the war file will be extracted to and where runtime information as well as configuration data will be written. Do not use -Dapex.erase=true iff you decide to follow my installation hierarchie, because doing so will erase all configuration data too.

Installing semantic technologies support on a fresh Oracle 11gR2.0.1

The following sketches the prerequisites of using Oracle Database Semantic Technologies, see Semantic Technologies Center and Oracle® Database Semantic Technologies Developer’s Guide as an overview and as the developer’s guide respectively, in your databse applications.

The procedure has been executed on a fresh Oracle 11R2.0.1 running on x64 Windows. The semantic technology stack in fact requires an enterprise edition of Oracle, featuring the partitioning and the spatial options as well as the underlying components XDB, JAVAVM and ORDIM to be installed … and licenced. Do check in advance whether this basement is affordable against your business budget because according to the current Oracle global price list by processor, an enterprise edition is around k$ 47, adding partioning by k$ 11 and spatial by k$ 17 plus updates and support. Do note also, that the standard and the standard one editions of Oracle, offering a subset of spatial called Oracle locator is not not sufficient to run the semantic technology layer. That is, it takes a couple of bucks to even create your first simple triple of sematic data with Oracle.

Checking the Oracle base software installation (anything executed as sysdba)

This section of the article, checking the Oracle base software installation itself, has been proof-taken from Stanley Guan’s blog Xml and More, entry Installation of Oracle Semantic Technologies. I can’t imagine why he has skipped the actual steps involving sematic-related code and objects there, moving me to write another post. However, Overview of Oracle Database Semantic Technologies is also worth a look really.

-- verify the underlying components, namely XDB, JAVAVM and ORDIM
select comp_id,version,status from dba_registry where comp_id in ('JAVAVM','ORDIM','XDB');

COMP_ID  VERSION      STATUS
-------- ----------   -------
ORDIM    11.2.0.1.0   VALID
XDB      11.2.0.1.0   VALID
JAVAVM   11.2.0.1.0   VALID

-- assure the options partitioning and spatial are available
select parameter, VALUE from v$option where parameter in ('Partitioning', 'Spatial') order by 1;

PARAMETER     VALUE
------------  ------
Partitioning  TRUE
Spatial       TRUE

-- additionally check spatial in detail
set serveroutput on
execute validate_sdo;

select comp_id, control, schema, version, status, comp_name from dba_registry where comp_id='SDO';

COMP_ID   CONTROL   SCHEMA   VERSION      STATUS   COMP_NAME
--------  --------  -------  -----------  -------  ----------
SDO       SYS       MDSYS    11.2.0.1.0   VALID    Spatial

select object_name, object_type, status from dba_objects where owner='MDSYS' and status <> 'VALID';

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Resolving connections errors on oci8 in jdeveloper 11gR2

Got a fresh jdev 11gR2 (11.1.2.0.0, studio) on an existing oracle client home 11.1.0.6.0 and tried to create a connection to an oracle database based on the oci8 option (thick instead of thin driver) in the Create Database Connection dialogue. The result on some test (test connection button) was a:

Test failed: oracle.jdbc.driver.T2CConnection.getLibraryVersionNumber()I

The resolution trick seems to comprise of a copy of the ojdbc6.jar of the oracle client installation, here in d:\Programme\Oracle\product\11.1.0\client_1\jdbc\lib\, to the jdeveloper app server lib path, here in d:\Programme\Oracle\Middleware\wlserver_10.3\server\lib\.

My reference to the problem solution was: this thread entry on the oracle forums.

have fun

Client-failover for dataguard switchover and failover

Introduction

The following is nothing more than some extension of the oracle metalink document:

[ID 740029.1] Step By Step Guide On How To Configure And Test Client-Failover For Dataguard Switchover And Failover

That is, the article does not only present the cookbook how-to of its anchestor but also examines what happens in the database and what the clients experience will be concerning a so called transparent application failover (TAF). The scenario has been tested on an oracle 10.2.0.3 on windows, please note that the metalink document points to a some more applicable technique available with oracle 11gR2 (Client Failover Best Practices for Highly Available Oracle Databases: Oracle Database 11g Release 2).

Client-failover for dataguard, away from other failover scenarios, essentially aims at using a general tnsnames entry against some server-side database endpoint, no matter what server-side database instance is currently running in a dataguard primary role. This is actually the transparency in a transparent application failover where the application, client here, does not have to care to switch its network configuration in any way (some simple implementation would be, not uncommonly, to provide some tnsnames.ora, tnsnames.ora.prm and tnsnames.ora.stb and rename the files) during a failover or switchover.

Installing DBPrism 3.0.2.1.0 (in-Oracle-Lucene) on a WinXP-10gR2

Introduction

This post talks, shares experiences, about installing Marcelo Ochoa’s (MO, Marcelo Ochoa’s personal blog) in-oracle-lucene implementation into an oracle 10.2.0.3 on winxp. MO did a really great job in porting a raw lucene to an oracle database. His essential trick is actually to represent the file system layer, lucene usually lives in, within a blob based storage as well as employing the oracle odci-interface. Any further information is available in the online documentation here Lucene Domain Index.

Downloads

The latest version of the code stack is available as lucene-odi-bin-3.0.2.1.0.zip from http://sourceforge.net/projects/dbprism/files/odi/3.0.2.1.0/. Do not care about the sourceforge project being called DBPrism or this other code stack around being tagged ojvm, this is all history. The latest version to comprise the lucene 3.0.2 core base is lucene-odi, lucene-ojvm currently features the lucene 2.9.2 core base as just a maintainance release.

Another necessary download is ant, as a build and installation runtime environment. I sourced apache-ant-1.8.1-bin.zip from http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi. Finally, iff you plan to compile the java code to windows dll’s for better performance (especially on production hosts), you may need to get Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Express from http://www.microsoft.com/express/Downloads. Its free and will supply, beneath a lot of other stuff, what is expected, i.e. provides for a C++ compiler and dll linker.

Installing Apex (3.2.1) along with OHS (11g iAS_10.1.3.3_Apache2_Modplsql2)

introduction

below you’ll find an installation procedure for apex along with just one variant of the available multitude of web connectors, here ohs (oracle http server aka apache) shipped with 11g. the post heavily sources from this article (in german), which is very much appreciated, but does regard oracle xe only and will not function for a 10g non-xe. futhermore, this article saved my day in pointing out what a non-xe 10gR2 dislikes in regard to dads.conf, the mod_plsql dad configuration file.

installation versions and prerequisites

ok, let’s go straight. the latest version of the 3.x release of apex, which is 3.2.1, can be downloaded here. indeed, apex version 4.0 has already been brought online but i want to eat that banana now. ohs is available as a standalone labelled 10.1.3.3 with the 11g distribution here or as a part of the companion media of ias 10gR3 versioned 10.1.3.5 here. i preferred to employ the first packaging, solely triggered by download time resources. the apex code will live inside an oracle 10gR2 10.2.0.3.

apex 3.2.x does define some installation requirements as set forth in this document. i already have oracle xdb, oracle text and things such that i only needed to update owa (pl/sql web toolkit).

installing apex

firstly do extract the apex source stack (apex_3.2.1.zip) into some persistent location. me, i used %ORACLE_HOME%\apex. from there on do update owa to at least version 10.1.2.0.6.

Passing sqlplus return codes to the cscript ws-host

introduction

there lately was an article, discussing a certain aspect of managing oracle on windows machines with shell scripting, called Redirecting dbv output to a file. this article is going to dive deeper into the scripting matter, especially contemplating an approach to control the execution of sqlplus-scripts, supervised by logic being embedded in the csript/jscript-interpreter of the windows scripting host (wsh).

sqlplus and scripting on windows – wsh and alternatives

the main problem of using sqlplus to feed the database with code and/or data is its inability to incorporate logic control. this is most notably true iff you have to manage more than one script, probably even branching or staging. sqlplus has variables, assignments, a lot of print formatting and so on but misses any concept of if-then-else and friends. you are obviously impelled to find some other, enclosing runtime environment to express your execution flow plans (and exception escapes .

scripting on windows using the msdos-batch command set was always a nightmare, wsh did a lot better on 2003- and xp-systems and now we are told to have powershell (msh formely) with vista and 2008, also see Next sysdba credentials syntax for impdp with Windows PowerShell. i do not want to examine any pro/con of this evolution nor do i want to introduce alternatives in its facets on windows. to me, having a free choice, i would always and anywhere employ python. it does the daily tasks in an amazingly smart fashion, offering an easily adaptable solution for nearly every duty. however, customer admins may have another perspective or another affectation or may just dislike python.

to that end, iff you are looking for a reliable friend that will help you on with programming your sqlplus script execution on a multitude of windows environments, wsh will not be the worst choice. not to be unmentioned though, wsh development has been discontinued by microsoft. it is to be replaced by powershell somewhere in the future. the most widespread wsh version counts 5.6, with a bugfix update to 5.7 for the vista- and 2008-systems.

download.oracle.com not available – use edelivery.oracle.com

already noticed? download.oracle.com has been down for around 2 days now, as of june 10, 13:30 hours. never expected something like this may happen anyway such that i was urgendly waiting for good news, but …

i contacted hello oracle in germany and these guys linked me to another source for oracle downloads that i merely suspected to be a post office for cd or better dvd shipping. but i was wrong. edelivery.oracle.com does offer another possibility for electronic delivery of oracle install packages.

me, i was in need of downloading 11gR2 win x64. here is how it goes:

Oracle sudden, inordinate irrensponsibility and ORA-07445

if you ever experience sudden, inordinate irrensponsibility of your oracle instance (one or more threads are running at 100% cpu) and find an error message like this in your alert.log:

ORA-07445: Exception aufgetreten: CORE Dump [ACCESS_VIOLATION] [unable_to_trans_pc] [PC:0x7C921766] [ADDR:0x4C43414F] [UNABLE_TO_READ] []

this windows xp sp2 hotfix may be for you:

KB951312 – When you run an application that uses a timer queue on a Windows XP-based computer, the application may stop responding

regards

rman duplicating an oracle database in a new sid / two host scenario

introduction

there are many ways to clone an oracle database. you may just copy and init a cold backup, do a rman restore / recover or employ datapump. according to the number of possibilities there is another multitude number of things you have to evaluate in advance, prepare, configure, keep in mind, postprocess etc., for every clone procedure. me, i mostly use cloning by cold backup, preferably if cloning to another host is requested and if the database system identifier (sid) remains the same. although this way of cloning nearly needs no additional work, you have to take into account that copying the (cold) files from source to destination may take a considerable amount of time, especially for large databases (i’m going to show in another post how to accelerate that by san-snapshotting, a technique becoming deservedly popular lately).

if you cannot go with source database downtimes at all, the rman duplicate functionality might be the preferred choice. it is sort of rman restore / recover, can therefore live on a hot backup, but saves yourself from playing around with controlfile backups / scripts or the nid tool for example. much more far from it, rman duplicate even uses a live, the source, controlfile for automated database structure setup on the destination. but now let’s see how a rman duplicate may work for a given scenario.