Chris Jones (of Oracle) has a new post to his OTN blog with a look at tracing in Oracle+PHP applications via some new methods added to the OCI8 extension.

No matter how it was installed, the PHP OCI8 extension provides a procedural API with familiar calls allowing efficient SQL and PL/SQL execution. The extension also supports some advanced Oracle features such as connection pooling. Recently some new OCI8 functions were checked into the PHP source code.

The new functions - oci_set_module_name, oci_set_action and oci_set_client_info - can be used on any existing (or new) Oracle connection to provide a bit more information about what's going on inside. You can get access to this information via the data dictionary views or through the SYS_CONTEXT() function in your SQL statements.

As Chris Jones briefly mentions and this press release discusses in more detail, Zend and Oracle have joined together to make it even easier for those using Oracle to also use Zend Server as their platform.

This is a first step to making it easy for our customers and users to quickly deploy the Zend software stack without having to go to various websites, download various packages and install them. [...] We now host an rpm package on the ULN [Unbreakable Linux Network] servers called zend-server-repo which updates the Linux OS install to also look at the software repositories hosted by Zend. When a user wants to install Zend Server, just a simple command will install the zend-server product directly.

They've also added it as a package for those using the Oracle Enterprise Linuxyum-installable package. You can find out more of the technical details on the Oracle Technology Network.

Zend's press release can be found here.

Chris Jones has officially launched the latest OCI8 (Oracle) drivers for PHP - version 1.4.0 Alpha:

I just released an Alpha version of PECL OCI8 1.4 on http://pecl.php.net/package/oci8 The code is also merged to what will eventually be the PHP 5.3.2 and PHP 6.0 releases. Documentation will appear on http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.oci8.php in the next few days, if all goes according to plan.

Updates in this alpha release include a few new connection attribute functions, a change in the driver name for 11gRD2 connections and a correction of a bug in the oci_bind_by_name error handling.

Chris Jones has pointed out a new article on the Oracle Technology Network about using PHP on the Oracle HTTP Server for 11g.

Oracle HTTP Server is the web server component in Oracle Fusion Middleware. Based on the Apache infrastructure, Oracle HTTP Server allows developers to program their site in a variety of languages and technologies. [...] Although PHP interpreter, language and server side module (mod_php) do not ship with the Oracle HTTP Server 11g release, Oracle will assists customers in configuration and inclusion of mod_php into Oracle HTTP Server. Note that Oracle does not support the PHP interpreter and language but it supports Oracle HTTP Server 11g release with mod_php included.

The tutorial steps you through the installation of a PHP component on the Oracle HTTP server to get the latest version of the interpreter up and running (PHP 5.3 as of the time of this post). The main part of the install is getting the mod_php extension for the server installed and working with the needed Oracle (OCI8) support. You'll need to be able to configure and make/make install to get it all working so be sure either you have the rights (or a handy admin is nearby).

Chris Jones has posted a guide to upgrading you PHP apps with as little downtime as possible via the new Editioning feature the 11gR2 version of the database.

The Editioning feature of Oracle Database 11gR2 is ideal for web sites that aim for no downtime when releasing application enhancements. Editioning allows certain database objects to have multiple versions all available at the same time. Applications can decide at runtime which version of the objects should be used.

He gives an example of a simple PHP application - an hours tracking app. He creates a stored function that calculates the number of days of vacation an employee can have and shows how to create a new "edition" of it with updated calculations. Your script then runs an alter on the session to point the edition to this new version.

As Chris Jones mentions on his blog today, the "Underground PHP & Oracle Manual" has gotten a bit of a facelift:

Thanks to the Oracle Technology Network design team our very popular, free Underground PHP & Oracle Manual has had a makeover and gained a snazzy new front cover. Farewell to the photo of the underground car park door that used to greet me each night on the way out of the office.

The book not only has a new cover but it also has a new page where you can download the latest copy. (The contents of the book haven't changed since the end of last year, though.)

All of you Oracle users out there might want to check out this recent post from Chris Jones, especially if you've been using the XMLType columns in your tables.

Today a reader mailed me about manipulating XMLType columns when the data is longer than the 4K limit that character-type handling imposes. My free book (see sidebar) has examples of how to do this using CLOB handling in PHP. I noticed that my xmlinsert.php example in the book does a SELECT and UPDATE, but never actually does an INSERT.

To correct the problem of the missing example he includes example code to connect to the database, push the XML into a bind variable and select the row back out to ensure everything's still structured correctly. You need to set up a new descriptor for the insert to work (CLOB).

John Lim has written up an article for the Oracle Technology Network about creating high performance systems with Oracle's Real Application Clusters (RAC) and PHP.

Running a software application that is able to work reliably through hardware and software failures is incredibly hard. [...] In this article, I will cover the network, architecture and design of our RAC application. Then I will discuss the real-world experiences and problems we experienced.

He details their RAC setup - load balancers, application servers and their RAC servers - before working through the different technologies and how they're all installed and configured to work together most efficiently.

It's been 12 years since the first Oracle PHP extension was committed and Chris Jones takes a brief look back in his latest blog post.

The oracle.c and oracle.h files for the "oracle" PHP extension were checked into the php/fi 2.0 source code by Stig Bakken on this day in 1997.

Chris mentions the directions the extension has headed, when "oci8" became the standard over "oracle" and the PDO driver/extension. You can find more on using PHP & Oracle in the Underground Manual and the PHP Developer Center on the Oracle Technology Network.

Chris Jones has a recommendation for those compiling Oracle support into PHP - there's a simple way to reduce the amount of disk space that your Instant Client install uses - a "only what's needed" setup.

Most PHP OCI8 users link PHP with the Oracle Instant Client (IC) libraries that handle the underlying "client" (i.e PHP OCI8 extension) communication with the database. IC is relatively small for the features it gives, and is very easy to install. A ZIP or RPM download unpacks a few libraries. [...] Although IC isn't particularly big - and it's getting relatively smaller all the time - there are two ways to reduce its size.

His two recommendations are to use the lite client version instead of the full-blown one (only has common character sets) or you can just remove the JDBC/ODBC/OCCI libraries from the full install. He lists out the files that are actually needed by the OCI8 extension to compile correctly.