Installing and Configuring Oracle Database XE

In Chapter 2, you installed Apache and PHP; now it’s time to add the Oracle database component. In this chapter, we’ll give you the basic installation instructions for Oracle Database XE on both Windows and supported Linux platforms. First, we’ll give you the general requirements for each platform, and then you can dive into the sections for your particular platform.

After the installation tasks for each platform, we’ll show you how to hook PHP up to your database and give you a couple of examples to try out to make sure that everything is working as expected.

Finally, we’ll show you how to perform a number of configuration tasks using the XE Web interface, as well as give you a high-level overview of Oracle administration tasks such as creating new user accounts.

Regardless of whether you are installing Oracle Database XE on Windows or Linux, there are several minimum requirements for the hardware and software on the workstation or server where you install Oracle Database XE:

System architecture: Oracle Database XE only runs on Intel or AMD x86–compatible processors.

Memory (RAM): 256MB is the minimum memory requirement; 512MB is recommended. Oracle Database XE can utilize as much as 1GB of RAM.

Network protocol: Oracle Database XE only supports TCP/IP.

Disk space: A minimum of 1.6GB of disk space is required for the Oracle executables and the starter database. Your disk space requirements may be higher, depending on the amount of user data. Oracle Database XE supports up to 4GB of user data.

Because you have Apache and PHP installed on your workstation already, your memory requirements may exceed 512MB, depending on the database applications you will run and any other applications running simultaneously on your workstation.

Your Web browser is the primary administrative interface for Oracle Database XE. Make sure that you enable cookies in your browser and that it is included in the following list:

1. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later 
    
2. Netscape Navigator 7.2 or later 
    
3. Firefox 1.0 or later 
    
4. Mozilla 1.7 or later

If you have another recently released browser, such as Opera or Konqueror, chances are it will most likely work. However, if you have any problems with these officially unsupported browsers, Oracle support may require that you reproduce your problem with one of the supported browsers.