Oracle8 OCI & results of installation

Hi, everyone -

Well, now that I've gotten Oracle8 up and running (with lots of help from several people, but esp. from Billy Veryenne - thanks to all), I've got to admit, it flies. On NT, the Net8 Configuration Assistant (actually, most all of the Java applets) proved pretty useless. I ended up hacking out a sqlnet.ora, tnsnames.ora, and listener.ora that work, from the sample files and fragments of the files that the Assistants created. I found TNSNAMES and a "traditional" DNS to be the best bet in this case (NT Server 4/SP 3, multi-homed).

Now, it's on to application development. One thing I've noticed is that there's very little documentation on the "older" OCI functions (oopen(), etc.) in this release (8.0.4.0.0); from what I've been able to find, the only mention of them is that they're osolete. The docs cover the "newer" ones (OCIServerAttach(), etc.). But, many of the sample programs still use the older functions. Should I expect to run across the older functions much, or just concentrate on the newer ones? And, where can I find info on the "old" functions?

A note on the documentation - I've had a lot of problems with the HTML documentation using Netscape 4.06. The Java search applet crashes after I use it once (it works the first time, then completely drops dead). I can use it once, then have to restart Netscape completely. For the time being, I'm resorting to using the docs in Adobe .pdf format, which works, but isn't nearly as easy to follow and use as the search applet & hypertext would be if they worked. Has anyone else had the same or similar, problems?

Getting back to the OCI - does anyone know of examples that demonstrate the use of functions like OCIDefineByPos()? For example, I have a field in a table that's of type VARCHAR, and initially retrieved it as SQLT_VCS. Didn't take me too long to figure out that the first 2 bytes of data are the length in bytes of the rest of the string. When I referred back to another section of the documentation, I was able to verify this. I didn't find anything, though, to indicate that SQLT_STR would work in this case too (it does, and actually produces the result I was after more directly - SQLT_CHR (VARCHAR2) works, too, if I pass "rlenp" to SQLDefineByPos()). Am I missing the boat somewhere, or are things really spread out like this?

I've also seen mention of the "Array Interface", in the vicinity of info on PL/SQL blocks. Are they the same? Similar? If I can exec more than one stmt in one server transaction (what the note for the Array Interface states) I'd like to know how...

One last thing - I've still not been able to get a response from Oracle via e-mail, etc. I'd really like to report the bugs & problems I've found. In an NT environment, a lot of sysadmins simply won't deal with the installation, etc. headaches I've run into - they'll just use something else (like SQL Server). Being a developer, I wasn't too put off - I had a lot of difficulty getting things going myself, but problems installing a new or unfamiliar product are more or less to be expected (though I did have them to a far greater degree than I did). But, from an IS/IT product recommendation standpoint, the way the install and setup (etc.) procedures currently are, I'd be hard- pressed to recommend it to a customer / client (at least, yet) unless we set it up & administered it for them. If there's a way to better communicate with Oracle, and to make installation less painful, please tell me.

It seems like the OCI is very similar to the ODBC interface. If anyone has any comments, hints, samples or whatever that they wouldn't mind passing along, please do.

Thanks again to everyone for helping me get this off the ground.

Sincerely,
Larry Morley
--

Data Demand              http://www.datademand.com

P.O. Box 5094                  Phone: 518-583-7867
Saratoga Springs, NY 12866       Fax: 518-583-8076


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