Oracle and Open Source

DB Prism

Now we’re going to move away from Java GUIs and into the realm of one of the most astonishing success stories of Java, Oracle, and open source cooperation. This is DB Prism, created by Marcelo F. Ochoa. DB Prism was originally built on Version 3.0 of an earlier product, OWSKiller, itself created by Martin Kuzela. Marcelo took this project over and changed its name (partially in response to a suggestion from Steve Muench of Oracle Corporation). The application has since gone from strength to strength, riding on the Apache JServ web server system (before iAS itself got there).

DB Prism is an open source framework designed to generate dynamic XML from an Oracle database (other databases are expected to be supported in the future). The DB Prism servlet engine works in two different modes: it can be run as a standalone servlet, or it can be plugged into the Cocoon publishing framework. When used with Cocoon, DB Prism provides a new way to make Internet applications work with technologies like XML and XSLT.

DB Prism can also be used both to emulate the old Oracle Web Application Server PL/SQL cartridge, and to work with the latest Oracle iAS products, in conjunction with the mod_plsql Apache module (which extends Apache to handle PL/SQL web content).

DB Prism is also a fully open source project, with Apache style licensing. You can use it to drive web output via either Oracle PL/SQL or Oracle8i Java stored procedures. The most exciting avenue for DB Prism is perhaps the Oracle ...