Re: JDBC and locally?

Expanding on your response and asking questions: (embedded)

Antoine BRUNEL wrote:

> Hi from Paris
>
> if you only intend to mount the database locally (I mean, you don't won't
> you PC to act as a server), and to connect locally, you should investigate
> these two products: Oracle Lite and Oracle Personal Edition

Oracle Lite is basically a thin footprint data store that requires only a few M memory. It's primary purpose seems to be the mobile store for java apps which will be dync's to a corporate Oracle Database.

Oracle Personal Edition is the same as Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, but provides a single user license mainly for development purposes.

> http://otn.oracle.com
>
> But I'm not sure these products are existing in version 7.3 (which is not
> supported anymore)...

Personal Edition existed in 7.3. Oracle Lite's predecessor was Oracle Mobile and that was a completely different animal - no Java. However, good luck finding either.

> "George Tryfon" <georgetryfon_at_freemail.gr> a écrit dans le message de
> news:b9l304$41e$1_at_usenet.otenet.gr...
> > Hello
> > I am a Java developer and I need to open an Oracle (I belive v7.3)
> database

Any reason for needing to open 7.3? Even 8.0 is obsolete and 8i (8.1.7) desupport is coming up fast. Oracle has even hinted at 10i arriving within 9 months to a year. Strongly suggest going 9i - which as Antoine says, is available for download at http://otn.oracle.com Developer's CDs are available at a fairly reasonable price (imo) from same source under "technology tracks"

> > LOCALLY
> > I do not have any Oracle engine that runs the database!

> > I just have the database files itself, copied into my PC

This is a totally useless environment. To access the database, you need to install, configure, etc. etc. etc.

If your environment is truly 7.3 or higher, get yourself a knowledgeable consultant to install the current s/w and upgrade that database (assuming you have everything related to the database). Oracle's s/w is pretty good about upgrading database files, as long as they are complete (including control files).

> > Is it possible to see the tables and the fields using JDBC, or at least
> any
> > other method?

Years ago, people used to write C programs to walk through tablespace files and extract related information such as a dictionary, mainly to recover from badly corrupted environments which had insufficient backup/recovery opportunities. Lessons learned - make sure the backup/recovery strategy works; trying to work at the raw tablespace level is a ruddy waste of time; although the information is there, and some of us could likely read it, a far better way is to snag the export.

So the answer is basically "without the engine running, no"

Questions:

• why 7.3?
• are you trying to recover? (or crack?)
• or are you trying to interoperate with data?