APPX 5 on Windows connectivity to Oracle

How to configure APPX 5 on Windows to store data inside Oracle.

Overview

Release 5.0.0 or higher of the APPX Utility allows APPX to connect to Oracle via Oracle's Instant Client instead of the Oracle Client Interface. This allows for an easier configuration because the files can be placed on the server by hand instead of making use of an Oracle install routine to place the Client. This document will show you where to get the Oracle Instant Client, where you might place the Instant Client Files from Oracle, and how to make APPX aware of the Oracle Instant Client files so that you can store APPX data inside Oracle. This document will focus on the Windows platform. This wiki site also has instructions for other platforms performing APPX to RDBMS connectivity, Linux x86-64, IBM AIX, HPUX PARISC, HPUX Itanium, and Oracle Solaris SPARC.

Prerequisites

This document assumes you already have Oracle installed on your network and configured to accept connections. For performance reasons, it is recommended that your RDBMS and APPX be on the same server. APPX should also already be installed with the AppxLoginMgr configured to accept logins.

Oracle Instant Client

Downloading

If you are running an APPX release prior to 6.0, you will need the 32 bit Oracle interface. Even if your OS is 64 bit, even if your Oracle is 64 bit, APPX requires you to connect to Oracle via the 32 bit version of the Oracle Instant Client. You can download the 32 bit version of Oracle Instant Client here. If you are running APPX 6.0 or greater, you need to know if you are running 32 or 64 bit APPX engine and download the appropriate Instant Client.

On my test server here I have APPX installed on Windows 2012R2. Oracle is installed on a secondary server - AIX. The connection from APPX to Oracle should work fine to Oracle 10.2.0.4 and above (including 11). I downloaded the 32 bit version of Oracle's Instant Client 10.2.0.4, selecting two file bundles, Instant Client Package - Basic and Instant Client Package - SQL*Plus.

Installing

To install the Instant client files, I simply unzipped them both and put all the files in one directory, C:\Oracle_instant_10.2 in this example:

Testing

The location isn't terribly important, only that you know where the files are located. Let's test the Oracle Instant Client with SQL*Plus. You can't test the Oracle Instant Client with just any SQL*Plus. You must use a version of SQL*Plus that was developed to use the Instant Client library files. To perform the SQL*Plus connection we need five pieces of information from your Oracle DBA. My example values are listen in parenthesis below:

• Oracle SID (customer)
• TCP port number that Oracle is configured to listen (TCP 1521)
• Resolvable DNS name or IP address of the Oracle server (10.50.0.6)
• Oracle user ID (larry)
• Oracle password (yacht)

PS C:\Oracle_instant_10.2> .\sqlplus.exe larry/yacht@10.50.0.6:1521/customer
SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.5.0 - Production on Thu Apr 7 12:22:01 2016
Copyright (c) 1982, 2010, Oracle. All Rights Reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - 64bit Production
With the Partitioning, OLAP and Data Mining options
SQL>

APPX

We can configure APPX now that we know that we can connect to Oracle using the Instant Client library files via the special Instant Client version of SQL*Plus (you did perform that test right?).

Configuration

Since the environment variable needed to enable APPX make use of the Oracle Instant Client must be present prior to the start of APPX, I've decided to place it in the 'appx.env' file ($APPXPATH\appx.env).

APPX_OCI_LIB=c:\Oracle_instant_10.2\oci.dll 

APPX_OCI_LIB should include the full path and file name for the 'oci.dll' file.

FMS settings

We need to create an FMS group of type 5 (Oracle) that will point to the Oracle server. To do this we will need the same five pieces of Oracle configuration data that we used when we performed a test connection to Oracle using the Instant Client version of SQL*Plus. The values that I'm using in this example are listed below in parenthesis.

• Oracle SID (customer)
• TCP port number that Oracle is configured to listen (TCP 1521)
• Resolvable DNS name or IP address of the Oracle server (10.50.0.6)
• Oracle user ID (larry)
• Oracle password (yacht)

FMS Group Creation

After creating the FMS group, we will define an APPX DMO PROSPECT to make use of this FMS group, finally performing a CREATE FILE from within APPX to create the file in Oracle. These steps are documented in screen shots below.

Fig. 1

First we need to go to our FMS settings inside APPX.

Fig. 2

Go into APPX ADD mode and create an FMS group with a meaningful name of a type 5 for your Oracle data.

Fig. 3

Now you need to fill out at least Server Name and Table Naming Scheme. You can select the HINTS button to see other suggested formats for the Table Naming Scheme if you wish. Note: The server name must be in the format <servername or ip>:port/Oracle SID

Fig. 4

I'm going to create a default identity that all my APPX connections to Oracle will use that don't have a specific matching identity.

Fig. 5

My default identity is Oracle user ID larry. Any APPX user without a specified Oracle Identity will connect to Oracle with this user ID.

Fig. 6

Figure 6 shows the entry of the default identity password. This is the password for my Oracle user ID larry.

Define Data file to point to Oracle

We're now finished with the creation of the FMS group. In the six screen shots above, you can see the creation of the FMS type 5 group named oracle10. We now are going to define APPX DMO PROSPECT to make use of this FMS group so that the data can be stored in Oracle. This will be documented in the following seven screen shots.

Fig. 7

Let's go to Database Definitions for DMO.

Fig. 8

Select DMO

Fig. 9

Select Database Management

Fig. 10

Go to File Selection

Fig. 11

Select PROSPECT

Fig. 12

In File Specifications change the FMS type to 5, and the FMS GROUP name to be whatever you used as your Oracle FMS group name. I used a name of oracle10.

Fig. 13

Finally, in figure 13, you see the Create Files screen with a message that the Oracle DMO PROSPECT file was created. If you receive a message similar to "*Can't load Oracle Call Interface (libclntsh)" see Troubleshooting section below.

Troubleshooting APPX to Oracle connection

If you try to make a connection to Oracle from APPX and receive a message "*Can't load Oracle Call Interface (libclntsh)" then you might be missing the environment variable required, or you might have it set to an incorrect path. Make sure you downloaded the correct Oracle Instant Client files for your platform and that it maches the bitness of your APPX engine.

Verify environment variable values via the following path: System Administration > System Setup > Release Information > Environment Variables.

-- JoeOrtagus - 2010-07-07