Re: Searching Oracle Database from the web ?

I have been using the beta of Oracle Webserver 2.0 for two weeks now. (Oracle gave us all Webserver's as a little treat at the Developer's conference in San Francisco several weeks back...)

It has been a delight! I can't wait to come to work. Sometimes I wake up at 5:30 thinking, "Must program WebServer. Gosh! Got to stay in bed another 30 minutes..."

It comes with a "tool kit" of stored proceedures developed by Oracle to write your own proceedures that generate HTML code. They are very well thought out. The documentation is all a bunch of HTML pages, and it is awful to read. The best way to learn is to play with the two examples, and type in several of the examples from the documentation, and then modify them to do what you want to do.

I've discovered the North-West Passage to being successful at this exercise is:

1. Configure the WebServer properly. Someone else installed it, and the "automatic" setup will make a user with the default table spaces to be "SYSTEM". (I was disappointed at this.)
2. Learn how to use the "tail -f ????.err" in the
   $ORACLE_HOME/ows2/log directory. This shows you all the
   data that is passed when you are debugging forms. Typically you:
3. write your stored proceedure in the editor
4. compile it in sqlplus in another window
5. hit the "reload" button on your browser to see how the new proceedure works. If it fails, your bowser is little help, but if you look at your .err log, it tells what was passed, and you can deduce the error.
6. Sometimes it is confusing to remember "where you are" as the browser will be "holding" you mistakes, and you need to navigate back to make sure you are loading your new code. This means liberal use of the "reload" button. (I am also a little confused on how Oracle cache's the stored proceedures. How do I flush the cache? Or do I need to worry about it? I asked Oracle, but they haven't got back to me.)
7. As you discover the joys of installing the software, and hunting for the "hidden" information in the documentation, you will find what you want is to go to
   $ORACLE_HOME/ows2/admdoc and grep on what you want to know.
   That is how I answered a lot of my question. Here is a student exercise for you: Once the webserver is down, how do you start it again?

I was led to believe at the conference that this server will be "free" with system 7.3, but the lisence becomes "unlimited" when it is connected to "the world".

Someone earlier commented on Webserver, and said something like "You gotta know HTML, and PL/SQL to make it work". I quite agree. One case in particular is to put checkboxes in a table. I couldn't find a tool kit procedure to do that, but knowing HTML, I was able to use the Oracle htp.table function with embedded HTML to make it work. (What glorious fun!) Received on Thu Mar 21 1996 - 00:00:00 CET