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<h2>Using ADOdb with PHP and Oracle: an advanced tutorial</h2>
</td><td><div align="right"><img src=cute_icons_for_site/adodb.gif width="88" height="31"></div></tr></table>
<p><font size="1">(c)2004-2005 John Lim. All rights reserved.</font></p>
<h3>1. Introduction</h3>
<p>Oracle is the most popular commercial database used with PHP. There are many ways of accessing Oracle databases in PHP. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li>The oracle extension</li>
<li>The oci8 extension</li>
<li>PEAR DB library</li>
<li>ADOdb library</li>
</ul>
<p>The wide range of choices is confusing to someone just starting with Oracle and PHP. I will briefly summarize the differences, and show you the advantages of using <a href="http://adodb.sourceforge.net/">ADOdb</a>. </p>
<p>First we have the C extensions which provide low-level access to Oracle functionality. These C extensions are precompiled into PHP, or linked in dynamically when the web server starts up. Just in case you need it, here's a <a href=http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/opensource/php/apache/inst_php_apache_linux.html>guide to installing Oracle and PHP on Linux</a>.</p>
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<td nowrap><b>Oracle extension</b></td>
<td>Designed for Oracle 7 or earlier. This is obsolete.</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td nowrap><b>Oci8 extension</b></td>
<td> Despite it's name, which implies it is only for Oracle 8i, this is the standard method for accessing databases running Oracle 8i, 9i or 10g (and later).</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>Here is an example of using the oci8 extension to query the <i>emp</i> table of the <i>scott</i> schema with bind parameters:
<pre>
$conn = OCILogon("scott","tiger", $tnsName);
$stmt = OCIParse($conn,"select * from emp where empno > :emp order by empno");
$emp = 7900;
OCIBindByName($stmt, ':emp', $emp);
$ok = OCIExecute($stmt);
while (OCIFetchInto($stmt,$arr)) {
print_r($arr);
echo "<hr>";
}
</pre>
<p>This generates the following output:
<div class=greybg>
Array ( [0] => 7902 [1] => FORD [2] => ANALYST [3] => 7566 [4] => 03/DEC/81 [5] => 3000 [7] => 20 )
<hr />
Array ( [0] => 7934 [1] => MILLER [2] => CLERK [3] => 7782 [4] => 23/JAN/82 [5] => 1300 [7] => 10 )
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<p>We also have many higher level PHP libraries that allow you to simplify the above code. The most popular are <a href="http://pear.php.net/">PEAR DB</a> and <a href="http://adodb.sourceforge.net/">ADOdb</a>. Here are some of the differences between these libraries:</p>
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<tr>
<td><b>Feature</b></td>
<td><b>PEAR DB 1.6</b></td>
<td><b>ADOdb 4.52</b></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td>General Style</td>
<td>Simple, easy to use. Lacks Oracle specific functionality.</td>
<td>Has multi-tier design. Simple high-level design for beginners, and also lower-level advanced Oracle functionality.</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td>Support for Prepare</td>
<td>Yes, but only on one statement, as the last prepare overwrites previous prepares.</td>
<td>Yes (multiple simultaneous prepare's allowed)</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td>Support for LOBs</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes, using update semantics</td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top">
<td>Support for REF Cursors</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
</tr>
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<td>Support for IN Parameters</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Yes</td>
</tr>
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<td>Support for OUT Parameters</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
</tr>
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<td>Schema creation using XML</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes, including ability to define tablespaces and constraints</td>
</tr>
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