www.dbebooks.com - Free Books & magazines PHP Oracle Web Development Data Processing, Security, Caching, XML, Web Services, and AJAX A practical guide to combining the power, performance, scalability, and reliability of Oracle Database with the ease of use, short development time, and high performance of PHP Yuli Vasiliev BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI PHP Oracle Web Development Data Processing, Security, Caching, XML, Web Services, and AJAX Copyright © 2007 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: August 2007 Production Reference: 1240707 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road Olton Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK. ISBN 978-1-847193-63-6 www.packtpub.com Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar (vinayak.chittar@gmail.com) Credits Author Yuli Vasiliev Reviewer Anup Nanda Acquisition Editor Priyanka Baruah Technical Editor Akshara Aware Code Testing Bansari Barot Editorial Manager Dipali Chittar Project Manager Patricia Weir Indexer Bhushan Pangaonkar Proofreader Chris Smith Production Coordinator Shantanu Zagade Cover Designer Shantanu Zagade About the Author Yuli Vasiliev is a software developer, freelance author, and a consultant currently specializing in open-source development, Oracle technologies, and service-oriented architecture (SOA). He has over 10 years of software development experience as well as several years of technical writing experience. He has written a series of technical articles for Oracle Technology Network (OTN) and Oracle Magazine. About the Reviewer Arup Nanda (arup@proligence.com) has been an Oracle DBA since 1993, when the world was slowly turning its attention to a big force to reckon with—Oracle7. But he was not so lucky; he was entrusted with a production Oracle database running Oracle 6. Since then, he has never been out of the Oracle DBA career path—weaving several interesting situations from modeling to performance tuning to backup/ recovery and beyond, with lots of gray hairs to document each ORA-600. He has written several articles for publications such as Oracle Magazine and for Oracle Tech Net, he has presented at conferences such as Oracle World and IOUG Live, and he has coauthored four books. In 2003, Oracle chose him as the DBA of the Year. He lives in Danbury, Connecticut, with his wife, Anu, and their son, Anish. Table of Contents Preface 1 Chapter 1: Getting Started with PHP and Oracle 5 Why PHP and Oracle? 6 Simplicity and Flexibility 6 Performance 7 Robustness 7 Exploring PHP and Oracle Alternatives 8 PHP and MySQL 8 JSF and Oracle 8 What You Need to Start 9 Pieces of Software Required 9 Oracle Database Considerations 10 Understanding the Oracle Database 10 Choosing Between Oracle Database Editions 11 Obtaining Oracle Database Software 12 PHP Considerations 13 Apache HTTP Server 13 Why PHP 5 14 Obtaining PHP 15 Making PHP and Oracle Work Together 15 Oracle Instant Client 15 Zend Core for Oracle 16 Using Oracle SQL*Plus 17 Why Use SQL*Plus in PHP/Oracle Development? 17 Connecting to a Database with SQL*Plus 18 Running Scripts in SQL*Plus 20 Putting It All Together 21 Creating Your First PHP/Oracle Application 23 Connecting to a Database 26 Using the Local Naming Method 26 Using the Easy Connect Method 27 Table of Contents [ ii ] Issuing an SQL Statement Against the Database 28 Fetching and Displaying Results 28 Summary 29 Chapter 2: PHP and Oracle Connection 31 Introducing the PHP OCI8 Extension 31 Why Use OCI8 Extension? 32 Processing SQL Statements with OCI8 32 Connecting to Oracle with OCI8 36 Defining a Connection String 37 OCI8 Functions for Connecting to Oracle 38 Parsing and Executing SQL Statements with OCI8 39 Preparing SQL Statements for Execution 39 Using Bind Variables 40 Executing SQL Statements 42 Handling Errors 42 Using the oci_error Function 42 Using the trigger_error Function 43 Using Exceptions 44 Fetching Results with OCI8 44 OCI8 Functions for Fetching 45 Fetching the Next Row 46 Fetching All the Rows 47 Alternatives to PHP OCI8 Extension 49 Using PEAR DB 49 Using ADOdb 51 Using PDO 52 Creating Your Own Library on Top of OCI8 53 Summary 54 Chapter 3: Data Processing 57 Implementing the Business Logic of a PHP/Oracle Application 58 When to Move the Data to the Processing 58 Advantages of Moving the Processing to the Data 59 Ways of Implementing Business Logic Inside the Database 60 Interaction between Components Implementing Business Logic 61 Using Complex SQL Statements 62 Employing Oracle SQL Functions in Queries 62 Oracle SQL Functions versus PHP Data Processing 62 Aggregate Functions 65 The GROUP BY Clause 66 Using Join Queries 66 Taking Advantage of Views 69 Table of Contents [ iii ] The Key Benefits of Using Views 69 Hiding Data Complexity with Views 70 Using the WHERE Clause 71 Using Stored Subprograms 73 What are Stored Subprograms? 73 Advantages of Stored Subprograms 75 An Example of When to Use a Stored Subprogram 76 Creating Stored Subprograms 80 Calling Stored Subprograms from PHP 82 Using Triggers 83 Creating Triggers 84 Firing Triggers 85 Calling Stored Procedures from a Trigger 85 Summary 86 Chapter 4: Transactions 89 Overview of Transactions 89 What is a Transaction? 90 What are ACID Rules? 91 How Transactions Work in Oracle 92 Using Transactions in PHP/Oracle Applications 93 Structuring a PHP/Oracle Application to Control Transactions 96 Developing Transactional Code 99 Controlling Transactions from PHP 99 Moving Transactional Code to the Database 105 Using Triggers 105 Dealing with Statement-Level Rollbacks 106 Transaction Isolation Considerations 109 What OCI8 Connection Function to Choose 110 Concurrent Update Issues 113 Locking Issues 114 Lost Updates 115 Autonomous Transactions 118 Summary 121 Chapter 5: Object-Oriented Approach 123 Implementing PHP Classes to Interact with Oracle 123 Building Blocks of Applications 124 Creating a Custom PHP Class from Scratch 125 Testing the Newly Created Class 127 Taking Advantage of PHP 5's Object-Oriented Features 128 Functionality and Implementation 130 Reusability 132 Handling Exceptions 132 [...]... to PHP, getting started is pretty simple When used in a complementary way, though, PHP and Oracle allow you to build high-performance, scalable, and reliable data- driven web applications with minimum effort PHP Oracle Web Development: Data processing, Security, Caching, XML, Web Services, and AJAX is a 100% practical book crammed full of easy-to-follow examples The book provides all the tools a PHP/ Oracle. .. Software Installing Oracle Database Software Installing Oracle Database Enterprise/Standard Editions Installing Oracle Database Express Edition (XE) Installing Oracle Database XE on Windows Installing Oracle Database XE on Linux Installing Apache HTTP Server Installing PHP Installing PHP on Windows Installing PHP on Unix-Like Systems Testing PHP Bridging the Gap Between Oracle and PHP Oracle Instant Client... quick-start chapter If so, you can move to Chapter 2, which discusses how to use PHP' s OCI8 extension, providing a common way to interact with Oracle database from PHP Why PHP and Oracle? With Oracle as the back-end database, you can develop and deploy data- driven PHP applications with a powerful, proven, and industry-leading infrastructure, while still taking advantage of PHP' s ease of use, short development. .. the Oracle terminology, an Oracle database is simply a collection of user and control data stored on a disk and is treated as a unit It is obvious that a database itself is useless—you need software to operate it An Oracle database server consists of an Oracle database and an Oracle instance While an Oracle database represents a collection of files that hold the database data and metadata, an Oracle. .. a wide spectrum of PHP/ Oracle developers, placing the emphasis on the most up-to‑date topics, such as new PHP and Oracle Database features, stored procedure programming, handling transactions, security, caching, web services, and AJAX What This Book Covers Chapter 1 gives an overview of the PHP and Oracle technologies, explaining why you might want to use PHP in conjunction with Oracle Chapter 2 covers... XML-enabled PHP applications on Oracle Database While PHP 4 lacked native SOAP support, PHP 5 introduces the SOAP extension Written in C, this built-in extension can serve as a good alternative to the PEAR::SOAP package Chapter 9 Web services discusses how to create a SOAP web service using PHP 5's SOAP extension, on top of the Oracle database [ 14 ] Chapter 1 Obtaining PHP PHP is licensed under the PHP. .. scalability With the advent of Oracle Database XE, a lightweight edition of Oracle Database, you now have the option to use an Oracle database for free even in a final product PHP is the most popular tool when it comes to building dynamic web applications Unlike Oracle Database, PHP is an open-source product The key reasons behind PHP' s popularity are its ease of use, short development time, and high performance... 247 248 254 254 257 258 260 Building PHP Applications on Oracle XML DB 261 Using Oracle Database for Storing, Modifying, and Retrieving XML Data 262 Database Storage Options for XML Data in Oracle Database Using XMLType for Handling XML Data in the Database Using XML Schemas Retrieving XML Data 263 265 267 272 Accessing Relational Data Through XMLType Views 275 Using Oracle XML DB Repository 284 Using... all of the components of the Oracle Database, offering enterprise-class performance as well as reliable and secure data management for mission-critical applications For more information on the Oracle Database product family, see Oracle white papers and Oracle documentation available on the OTN web site at: http://www .oracle. com/technology You can choose the edition of Oracle Database that best suits your... Getting Started with PHP and Oracle There are two kinds of database-driven applications Ones that use databases just to store data, performing all the operations on it on the client side; and the others that use databases not only to store data, but also to process it, thus moving data processing to the data While building the key business logic of a database-driven application inside the database is always . PHP and Oracle allow you to build high-performance, scalable, and reliable data- driven web applications with minimum effort. PHP Oracle Web Development: Data processing, Security, Caching, XML,. Oracle Database with the ease of use, short development time, and high performance of PHP Yuli Vasiliev BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI PHP Oracle Web Development Data Processing, Security, Caching, XML,. www.dbebooks.com - Free Books & magazines PHP Oracle Web Development Data Processing, Security, Caching, XML, Web Services, and AJAX A practical guide to combining the