Help linking oracle 11g and joomla 1.6

Question

Hello
I am currently working on a project which uses Joomla 1.6 and MySQL 5.15. We now need to migrate the DB from MySQL to Oracle 11g R2 and I would like some help in finding a driver between Oracle 11g and Joomla 1.6. If anybody has worked with and successfully connected these two could you please help me out.
Could really do with the help as I need to complete the project soon.
Thanks
Bharat
Edited by: 842910 on Mar 8, 2011 11:10 PM

Answer 1

Hey there...
Well.... It sort of all depends on how Joomla is connecting to the database. Are they using a pre-built framework like PDO or Zend ?
If they are it should be a a relatively easy task to move it to Oracle. If not then you will have to alter their DB layer and replace a lot of the mySQL calls with Oracle calls and add a few. For example MySQL does not parse a statement prior to execution but Oracle does eg:
$oraDB = oci_connect([parms]);
$query = oci_parse($OraDB,'select 'a' from dual');
// If you are binding variables it would go between the parse and execute areas and it is mostly the same as doing
// it with MySQL
oci_execute($query);
$data = oci_fetch_assoc($query);The instant client and the full client do things very differently and connections to the DB server are done differently so you will need to understand those differences and code accordingly.
The OCI_8 php libraries are well established and documented. They must be installed on the server on which Joomla is running.
If your machine is setup correctly this is as simple as:
%pecl install oci8
pecl will take care of pretty much everything including dealing with 32 -v- 64 bit and all you need do is make an entry in the php extension section letting it know the OCI libraries are installed. If not it is a bit more complicated.
The software along with the instructions ca be found here: http://pecl.php.net/package/oci8
You must have either the instant client or the regular Oracle client installed on the server on which Joomla is running.
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/downloads/index.htmlhttp://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/enterprise-edition/downloads/index.html
After you accept the license agreement click on "See All" and you will see both the instant client and the full client for the version you require.
It is extremely un-wise to attempt to run any version of oracle on the machine running joomla / Apache. If you do so, then you stand a better then even chance of failure as Oracle does not like to share resources.
Make sure you read the install instructions for the oracle client and pay very close attention to things like environment settings and permissions issues on the php server as these are some of the most common problems. Once the client is installed and the oci libraries are installed things should run very smoothly. The whole php to Oracle chain is very fast and the fact that the db server is remote from the web server will not be an issue as long as the links are fast.
If you have problems get back to us and we will do the best we can to help you sort things out.
- FG