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DBD-Oracle-1.43_00
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/ DBD::Oracle::Troubleshooting

NAME

DBD::Oracle::Troubleshooting - Tips and Hints to Troubleshoot DBD::Oracle

VERSION

version 1.43_00

CONNECTING TO ORACLE

If you are reading this it is assumed that you have successfully installed DBD::Oracle and you are having some problems connecting to Oracle.

First off you will have to tell DBD::Oracle where the binaries reside for the Oracle client it was compiled against. This is the case when you encounter a

DBI connect('','system',...) failed: ERROR OCIEnvNlsCreate.

error in Linux or in Windows when you get

OCI.DLL not found

The solution to this problem in the case of Linux is to ensure your 'ORACLE_HOME' (or LD_LIBRARY_PATH for InstantClient) environment variable points to the correct directory.

export ORACLE_HOME=/app/oracle/product/xx.x.x

For Windows the solution is to add this value to you PATH

PATH=c:\app\oracle\product\xx.x.x;%PATH%

If you get past this stage and get a

ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier specified

error then the most likely cause is DBD::ORACLE cannot find your .ORA (TNSNAMES.ORA, LISTENER.ORA, SQLNET.ORA) files. This can be solved by setting the TNS_ADMIN environment variable to the directory where these files can be found.

If you get to this stage and you have either one of the following errors;

ORA-12560: TNS:protocol adapter error
ORA-12162: TNS:net service name is incorrectly specified

usually means that DBD::Oracle can find the listener but the it cannot connect to the DB because the listener cannot find the DB you asked for.

Oracle utilities

If you are still having problems connecting then the Oracle adapters utility may offer some help. Run these two commands:

$ORACLE_HOME/bin/adapters
$ORACLE_HOME/bin/adapters $ORACLE_HOME/bin/sqlplus

and check the output. The "Protocol Adapters" should include at least "IPC Protocol Adapter" and "TCP/IP Protocol Adapter".

If it generates any errors which look relevant then please talk to your Oracle technical support (and not the dbi-users mailing list).

Connecting using a bequeather

If you are using a bequeather to connect to a server on the same host as the client, you might have to add

bequeath_detach = yes

to your sqlnet.ora file or you won't be able to safely use fork/system functions in Perl.

See the discussion at http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.dbi.dev/2012/02/msg6837.html and http://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.dbi.users/2009/06/msg34023.html for more gory details.

USING THE LONG TYPES

Some examples related to the use of LONG types are available in the examples/ directory of the distribution.

LINUX

Installing with Instantclient .rpm files.

Nothing special with this you just have to set up you permissions as follows;

1) Have permission for RWE on '/usr/lib/oracle/10.2.0.3/client/' or the other directory where you RPMed to

2) Set export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/10.2.0.3/client

3) Set export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib

4) If you plan to use tnsnames to connect to remote servers and your tnsnames.ora file is not in $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin, you will need to Export TNS_ADMIN=dir to point DBD::Oracle to where your tnsnames.ora file is

undefined symbol: __cmpdi2 comes up when Oracle isn't properly linked to the libgcc.a library.

In version 8, this was correctd by changing the SYSLIBS entry in $ORACLE_HOME/bin/genclntsh to include "-L/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/3.2 -lgcc".

I had tried this with no success as when this program was then run, the error "unable to find libgcc" was generated. Of course, this was the library I was trying to describe!

It turns out that now it is necessary to edit the same file and append "`gcc -print-libgcc-file-name`" (including the backquotes!). If you do this and then run "genclntsh", the libclntsh is properly generated and the linkage with DBD::Oracle proceeds properly.

cc1: invalid option `tune=pentium4'" error

If you get the above it seems that eiter your Perl or OS where compiled with a different version of GCC or the GCC that is on your system is very old.

No real problem with the above however you will have to

1) run Perl Makefile.PL

2) edit the Makefile and remove the offending '-mtune=pentium4' text

3) save and exit

4) do the make install and it should work fine for you

Oracle 9i Lite

The advice is to use the regular Oracle9i not the lite version.

Another great source of help was: http://www.puschitz.com/InstallingOracle9i.html

just getting 9i and 9i lite installed. I use fvwm2(nvidia X driver) as a window manager which does not work with the 9i install program, works fine with the default Gnomish(nv X driver), it could have been the X driver too.

With Redhat9 it is REAL important to set LD_ASSUME_KERNEL to 2.4.1.

I didn't try this but it may be possible to install what is needed by only downloading the first disk saving some 1.3GB of download fun.

I installed a custom install from the client group. The packages I installed are the Programmers section and sqlplus. I noticed that the Pro*C when on as a result of the checking the Programmers section I assume.

Once Oracle was installed properly the DBD::Oracle install went as smooth as just about every other CPAN module.

Oracle 10g Instantclient

The Makefile.PL will now work for Oracle 10g Instantclient. To have both the Compile and the test.pl to work you must first have the LD_LIBRARY_PATH correctly set to your "instantclient" directory. (http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/oci/instantclient/instantclient.html)

The present version of the make creates a link on your "instantclient" directory as follows "ln -s libclntsh.so.10.1 libclntsh.so". It is needed for both the makefile creation and the compile but is not need for the test.pl. It should be removed after the compile.

If the Makefile.PL or make fails try creating this link directly in your "instantclient" directory.

Oracle Database 10g Express Edition 10.2

To get 10Xe to compile correctly I had to add $ORACLE_HOME/lib to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH as you would for an install against 10g Standard Edition, Standard Edition One, or Enterprise Edition

UTF8 bug in Oracle 9.2.0.5.0 and 9.2.0.7.0

DBD::Oracle seems to hit some sort of bug with the above two versions of DB. The bug seems to hit when you when the Oracle database charset: US7ASCII and the Oracle nchar charset: AL16UTF16 and it has also been reported when the Oracle database charset: WE8ISO8850P1 Oracle nchar charset: AL32UTF16.

So far there is no patch for this but here are some work arounds

use DBD::Oracle qw( SQLCS_IMPLICIT SQLCS_NCHAR );
...
$sth->bind_param(1, $value, { ora_csform => SQLCS_NCHAR });

or this way

$dbh->{ora_ph_csform} = SQLCS_NCHAR; # default for all future placeholders

or this way

utf8::downgrade($parameter, 1);

CYGWIN

Makefile.PL should find and make use of OCI include files, but you have to build an import library for OCI.DLL and put it somewhere in library search path. one of the possible ways to do this is issuing command

dlltool --input-def oci.def --output-lib liboci.a

in the directory where you unpacked DBD::Oracle distribution archive. this will create import library for Oracle 8.0.4.

Note: make clean removes '*.a' files, so put a copy in a safe place.

Compiling DBD::Oracle using the Oracle Instant Client, Cygwin Perl and gcc

  1. Download these two packages from Oracle's Instant Client for Windows site (http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/oci/instantclient/htdocs/winsoft.html):

    Instant Client Package - Basic: All files required to run OCI, OCCI, and JDBC-OCI applications

    Instant Client Package - SDK: Additional header files and an example makefile for developing Oracle applications with Instant Client

    (I usually just use the latest version of the client)

  2. Unpack both into C:\oracle\instantclient_11_1

  3. Download and unpack DBD::Oracle from CPAN to some place with no spaces in the path (I used /tmp/DBD-Oracle) and cd to it.

  4. Set up some environment variables (it didn't work until I got the DSN right):

    ORACLE_DSN=DBI:Oracle:host=oraclehost;sid=oracledb1
ORACLE_USERID=username/password

  5. perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install

Note, the TNS Names stuff doesn't always seem to work with the instant client so Perl scripts need to explicitly use host/sid in the DSN, like this:

my $dbh = DBI->connect('dbi:Oracle:host=oraclehost;sid=oracledb1',
'username', 'password');

SUN

If you get this on a Solaris 9 and 10 box

"Outofmemory!
 Callback called exit.
 END failed--call queue aborted."

The solution may be as simple as not having you "ORACLE_HOME" Defined in the environment.

It seems that having it defined will prevent the error.

VMS

This is related to Oracle RDBMS 9.2 and later, since Oracle made fundamental changes to oracle installation requirements and factual installation with this release.

Oracle's goal was to make VMS installation be more like on *nix and Windows, with an all new Oracle Home structure too, requiring an ODS-5 disk to install Oracle Home on instead of the good old ODS-2.

Another major change is the introduction of an Oracle generated logical name table for oracle logical names like ORA_ROOT and all its derivatives like ORA_PROGINT etc. And that this logical name table is inserted in LNM$FILE_DEV in LNM$PROCESS_DIRECTORY.

(LNM$PROCESS_DIRECTORY)

"LNM$FILE_DEV" = "SERVER_810111112"
        = "LNM$PROCESS"
        = "LNM$JOB"
        = "LNM$GROUP"
        = "LNM$SYSTEM"
        = "DECW$LOGICAL_NAMES"

This ensures that any process that needs to have access to oracle gets the environment by just adding one logical name table to a central process specific mechanism.

But as it is inserted at the very top of LNM$FILE_DEV it also represents a source of misfortune - especially if a user with enough privilege to update the oracle table does so (presumably unintentionally), as an examble by changing NLS_LANG.

PERL has the abillity to define, redefine and undefine (deassign) logical names, but if not told otherwise by the user does it in the first table in above list, and not as one would normally expect in the process table.

Installing DBI and DBD::Oracle has influence upon this since in both cases a few environment variables are read or set in the test phase. For DBI it is the logical SYS$SCRATCH, which is a JOB logical. For DBD-Oracle it is when testing a new feature in the Oracle RDBMS: UTF8 and UTF16 character set functionality, and in order to do this it sets and unsets the related environment variables NLS_NCHAR and NLS_LANG.

If one is not careful this changes the values set in the oracle table - and in the worst case stays active until the next major system reset. It can also be a very hard error to track down since it happens in a place where one normally never looks.

Furthermore, it is very possibly that some or all of the UTF tests fails, since if one have a variable like NLS_LANG in his process table, then even though 'mms test' sets it in the wrong table it is not invoked as it is overruled by the process logical...

The way to ensure that no logicals are set in the oracle table and that the UTF tests get the best environment to test in, and that DBI correctly translates the SYS$SCRATCH logical, use the logical

PERL_ENV_TABLES

to ensure that PERL's behavior is to leave the oracle table alone and use the process table instead:

$ DEFINE PERL_ENV_TABLES LNM$PROCESS, LNM$JOB

This tells PERL to use the LNM$PROCESS table as the default place to set and unset variables so that only the perl users environment is affected when installing DBD::Oracle, and ensures that the LNM$JOB table is read when SYS$SCRATCH is to be translated.

PERL_ENV_TABLES is well documented in the PERLVMS man page.

Oracle8 releases are not affected, as they don't have the oracle table implementation, and no UTF support.

Oracle 9.0 is uncertain, since testing has not been possible yet, but the remedy will not hurt :)

AUTHORS

  • Tim Bunce <timb@cpan.org>

  • John Scoles

  • Yanick Champoux <yanick@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 1994 by Tim Bunce.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.