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Configuring Zend Server

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I got all the screen shots out last night, then I realized that the configuration instructions were missing. They’ve been added now, and you can check if you’re interested.

In the process, I noticed that Zend Server Community Edition is using connection pooling by default with Oracle. This means that the TNS alias must be qualified by a hostname.

For example, on your local PC with Oracle Database 10g Express Edition, the default TNS alias is XE. You can’t use that anymore when you’re running the Zend Server. You must qualify it as localhost/XE or hostname/XE as the connection string. A natural alternative is to insert a fully qualified TNS network map

Here are three possible connection patterns:

Localhost Connection ↓

This shows you how to connect with localhost/XE.

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<?php
  // Attempt to connect to your database.
  $c = @oci_connect("student", "student", "localhost/xe");
  if (!$c) {
    print "Sorry! The connection to the database failed. Please try again later.";
    die();
  }
  else {
    print "Congrats! You've connected to an Oracle database!";
    oci_close($c);
  }
?>

If you connect with a localhost string, your listener logs will show the following:

02-JUL-2009 23:32:11 * (CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=xe)(CID=(PROGRAM=C:\Program?Files\Zend\ZendServer\bin\php-cgi.exe)(HOST=MCLAUGHLINXP32)(USER=SYSTEM))) * (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=127.0.0.1)(PORT=1405)) * establish * xe * 0

The two things to point out with this are: (1) The host is 127.0.0.1; and (2) The TNS alias is lowercase.

Hostname Connection ↓

This shows you how to connect with hostname/XE.

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<?php
  // Attempt to connect to your database.
  $c = @oci_connect("student", "student", "hostname/xe");
  if (!$c) {
    print "Sorry! The connection to the database failed. Please try again later.";
    die();
  }
  else {
    print "Congrats! You've connected to an Oracle database!";
    oci_close($c);
  }
?>

If you connect with a hostname string, your listener logs will show the following:

02-JUL-2009 23:29:16 * (CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=xe)(CID=(PROGRAM=C:\Program?Files\Zend\ZendServer\bin\php-cgi.exe)(HOST=MCLAUGHLINXP32)(USER=SYSTEM))) * (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=172.16.153.138)(PORT=1403)) * establish * xe * 0

The two things to point out with this are: (1) the host is the real IP address on the network; and (2) the TNS alias is lowercase.

Overriding TNS Connection ↓

This shows you how to connect with an overriding TNS connection.

Before you adopt this style, you may want to set a %TNS_ADMIN% for your Windows OS. The suggestion is made since you may be running the client software and there’s a connection problem. You can click on the Setup a TNS_ADMIN Environment Variable menu to get at the details.

Set a TNS_ADMIN Environment Variable ↓

You can also set a %TNS_ADMIN% environment variable, by taking the following steps.

  1. Open your System icon from the traditional Control Panel. Inside, click on the Advanced tab. Click the Environment Variable tab.

EnvVariable1

  1. The bottom window is where you set System variables. Click the New button to add a %TNS_ADMIN% variable.

EnvVariable2

  1. The New System Variable Window lets you enter the variable. Unless you’ve placed your tnsnames.ora in a different location, you find the file in the ORACLE_HOME\network\admin. If you’ve installed Oracle XE and Oracle on the same machine, you should know which contains both values because you entered them. The utilities don’t do that. If somebody has a question on that, let me know and I’ll put instructions out.

NewSystemVariable

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<?php
  $tns = "(DESCRIPTION =
              (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = mclaughlinxp32)(PORT = 1521))
              (CONNECT_DATA=(SERVER = DEDICATED)(SERVICE_NAME = XE)))";
 
  // Attempt to connect to your database.
  $c = @oci_connect("student", "student", $tns);
  if (!$c) {
    print "Sorry! The connection to the database failed. Please try again later.";
    die();
  }
  else {
    print "Congrats! You've connected to an Oracle database!";
    oci_close($c);
  }
?>

If you connect with an overriding TNS connection, your listener logs will show the following:

02-JUL-2009 23:27:10 * (CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=XE)(CID=(PROGRAM=C:\Program?Files\Zend\ZendServer\bin\php-cgi.exe)(HOST=MCLAUGHLINXP32)(USER=SYSTEM))) * (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=172.16.153.138)(PORT=1401)) * establish * XE * 0

The two things to point out with this are: (1) the host is the real network IP address; and (2) the TNS alias is uppercase, which is consistent with the TNS connection string.

I’m sure it was in the documents but then again, I didn’t read them. ;)

Written by maclochlainn

July 2nd, 2009 at 11:39 pm

Posted in Linux,Microsoft Vista,Microsoft XP,OPAL,Oracle,PHP

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One Response to 'Configuring Zend Server'

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  1. Since Zend Server uses Oracle Instant Client it is “remote” from any database and doesn’t automatically have access to the ORACLE_HOME directory. If you want to use a TNS connect name in the oci_connect() call, you need to explicitly tell PHP where to find the tnsnames.ora file which maps the connect name to the connect descriptor. You can do this by setting the TNS_ADMIN variable to the directory containing tnsnames.ora.

    Chris jones

    7 Jul 09 at 11:47 am

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