On the SitePoint PHP blog today, there's this look at the integration of PHP and Oracle's latest announcement - the (free) Oracle 10g XE edition of their database software - and Harry Fuecks has a first look at the setup.

In case you missed it, yesterday Oracle announced a free (as in beer) version of their database - Oracle 10g Express Edition (XE) - basically a "lite" version—some industry analysis here. Significance of this move aside, more interesting is having a play. Managed to get the equivalent of a "Hello World" from PHP to Oracle up in under 1.5 hours today (ran into a specific glitch that required a re-install otherwise would have been less time). Here’s how...

He has it installed on a Windows XP system (of course, there's linux support too), and found the actual install of the software easy enough. After setting up a user and password, a local install of HTMLDb is availible. Once the Oracle software is taken care of, he gives you the changes to PHP you'll need to make to get it all cooperating...