A few short years ago, nobody could have imagined that the day would come when Oracle Corporation would not only tolerate the idea of open source software, but even incorporate it into its own product lines. And yet today the Oracle8i database has been ported to the open source Linux operating system, the open source Apache JServ web server is a vital part of Oracle’s Internet Application Server (iAS) product, and hundreds of exciting applications are underway, linking open source programs to Oracle databases and providing a new world of tools for database administrators and developers everywhere.
Both of the authors are Oracle developers who are keenly interested in the theory and practice of open source software. For quite a few years, we have been developing and maintaining our own open source applications for Oracle and following with great enthusiasm the adoption of open source tools by Oracle and other commercial organizations. For most DBAs and developers, though, information on how Oracle meets open source has been hard to find and hard to assess.
Our main goal for this book is to provide at least a snapshot of where we are today in the Oracle/open source arena. We’ll introduce the major open source technologies of special relevance to Oracle—Perl, Tcl, Python, Apache, GNOME, GTK+, and even some areas of Java—and explain how they are being used to build Oracle applications and connect to Oracle databases today. We’ll also describe the best of the Oracle applications that are available to Oracle DBAs and developers. For all these tools, we’ll provide introductory material, rough outlines of installation and configuration procedures (though we recommend you check the online documentation for details), and examples of usage.
We have a second goal as well, and that is to motivate you to consider writing your own Oracle open source applications in the future. The world of Oracle and open source is wide open. Developers are building exciting and innovative applications, but there is plenty of room for more. As we explain different applications in this book, we’ll mention ways you can get involved with helping to extend their capabilities. We’ll also show you how various applications are implemented, to provide models for your own development.
This book is aimed mainly at Oracle database administrators and developers who do not already have a lot of experience using and developing open source software. Those two audiences have somewhat different information needs:
If you are an Oracle DBA who is primarily interested in downloading and running existing Oracle open source applications, you will be most interested in the applications chapters—Chapter 4, Chapter 6, Chapter 8, and Chapter 10. In addition, you should certainly read Chapter 1. You should also at least skim Chapter 2, so you will understand how the applications you will be using interface to your Oracle database.
If you are a developer who is considering building your own Oracle open source application, you will want to read the full set of chapters to learn what technologies are being used as building blocks for Oracle applications, how they connect to Oracle, and how other open source developers have built applications that you might use as models for building your own.
Perhaps you are already knowledgeable about the various open source technologies described in this book and are looking specifically for information about how to connect your applications to Oracle. In this case, you may find the introductions to Perl, Tcl, the Web, Java, and so on too basic, but we hope you will find useful information about their Oracle interfaces in the following chapters.
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