The latest post on Chris Jones's blog walks you through the process, step-by-step, of how to build PHP 5.3 with support for the Oracle HTTP server included with the 11g version of the database.

I get the impression that not a lot of people in the PHP community are using Itanium. There are enough warnings during PHP compilation that would make me extremely uncomfortable using it for production applications. A PHP on Itanium installation bug that I logged long ago has not been patched, indicating to me that not many PHP people are investing time in the platform. I can't recommend using Itanium platform for PHP. Anyway, I had a need and here are the steps for posterity.

It's a pretty simple process (if you're used to compiling your own software):

• Checks the OS and compiler to ensure needed tools are installed
• Set up the Oracle environment variables
• Set up the PHP environment
• Copy over the needed header files
• Extract PHP and modify its configure slightly
• make distclean and then configure

As mentioned by Chris Jones today, the Oracle Technology Network has posted a few new tutorials in their "Oracle By Example" series. Two of them deal with using PHP and the 11g version of the Oracle database.

The first, Using PHP with Oracle Database 11g, is an introduction to some of the basics of interacting with the database including using connection pooling and tips on query optimization.

The second tutorial, Developing a PHP Web Application with Oracle Database 11g, shows you how to build up a basic company portal with the help of the Zend Framework and the Netbeans IDE.

Chris Jones has pointed out a new article on the Oracle Technology Network about using PHP on the Oracle HTTP Server for 11g.

Oracle HTTP Server is the web server component in Oracle Fusion Middleware. Based on the Apache infrastructure, Oracle HTTP Server allows developers to program their site in a variety of languages and technologies. [...] Although PHP interpreter, language and server side module (mod_php) do not ship with the Oracle HTTP Server 11g release, Oracle will assists customers in configuration and inclusion of mod_php into Oracle HTTP Server. Note that Oracle does not support the PHP interpreter and language but it supports Oracle HTTP Server 11g release with mod_php included.

The tutorial steps you through the installation of a PHP component on the Oracle HTTP server to get the latest version of the interpreter up and running (PHP 5.3 as of the time of this post). The main part of the install is getting the mod_php extension for the server installed and working with the needed Oracle (OCI8) support. You'll need to be able to configure and make/make install to get it all working so be sure either you have the rights (or a handy admin is nearby).

With the release of another DLL driver for PHP on Windows to access Oracle databases, Chris Jones wanted to alleviate any confusion there might be between the two in a new blog post.

As I foreshadowed in a now distant post, Pierre has installed Oracle 11g Instant Client on the PHP Windows build box and updated the OCI8 build scripts for PHP 5.3 (and PHP 6). PHP 5.3 now has two mutually exclusive versions of the OCI8 extension DLL [...] The two DLLs have the same user script API that do the same thing. You only need to (and only can) enable one at any one time. Choose the one that matches your Oracle client libraries.

The two DLLs - php_oci8.dll and php_oci8_11h.dll - have pretty self-explanitory names, but it could be confusing as to whether you need both or not if you go the 11g route.

Chris Jones has pointed out a video of a recent presentation at the Singapore PHP User Group Meeting done by Blair Layton (of Oracle Asia Pacific) on the OCI8 extension and using it to connect PHP.

While most PHP developers start off on the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack there maybe a need to investigate OPAL (Oracle, PHP, Apache, Linux). This talk will discuss what Oracle offers PHP developers including operating system, database, middleware and tools support. You will find out how to take advantage of specific features in Oracle Database 11g that assist PHP developers such as Database Resident Connection Pooling with code samples and demos. An example architecture from a USA web company of a highly scalable PHP application that uses Oracle database will also be discussed.

His slides are also available for download - Set 1, Set 2 and you can watch the full video here.

Chris Jones has written up another post about a feature in some of the latest OCI8 libraries for PHP - result caching.

Oracle Database 11g introduced "server-side"and "client-side" result caches. The database cache is enabled with the RESULT_CACHE_MODE database parameter, which has several modes. With the default mode, queries for which you want results to be cached need a hint added - No PHP changes are required.

This caching is perfect for results from smaller lookup tables and can drop CPU usage by quite a bit. Oracle automatically takes care of validating the cache entries when something changes the stored results so your query is always fetching the latest (without having to worry about a timestamp on the cache or anything like that). He gives a few examples of how it would work, comparing the queries both with and without the caching.

Christopher Jones mentions the release of the latest OCI8 component for PHP - version 1.3.4 stable.

OCI 1.3.4, with the changes I mentioned in my last post, is now available on PECL: http://pecl.php.net/package/oci8.

He also mentions the work on the Windows version of the extension that he's been up to with the plan to make two OCI8 DLL releases for the future - one using 10g libraries and the other using 11g.

Gennady Feldman has posted the second part of his install instructions for setting up the Oracle Instant Client (11g) and the Oracle OCI8 drivers in PHP.

This is part 2 of my installation instructions. This is my attempt to provide an updated and simplified reference. I am leaving Part 1 as is, because that part can also be useful.

This updated tutorial shows the steps to installing 11g (versus 10g in the previous example) including the packages you'll need, the commands to make it work and a PEAR version of the install if you choose to go that route.

Christopher Jones notes in a new post that the latest version of the Oracle database has been released - Oracle 11g.

On the PHP front: the OCI8 and PDO_OCI8 extensions work with it but because library names have changed to 11.1, the install script needs to be updated. I will merge a build patch for this very soon to PHP's CVS.

Until that patch is in place, he offers a quick fix to get things compiling and back up and working.