Christopher Jones on OPAL

<?php

// Escaping quotes or other meta characters in SQL can be painful
$sql[] = 'select sys_context(\'userenv\', \'service_name\') from dual';

// Unless you get lucky with your quoting style
$sql[] = "select sys_context('userenv', 'service_name') from dual";

// Escaping strings is even more annoying in XQUERY syntax which, when
// embedded in SQL, uses both single and double quotes and its own
// dollar-prefixed variables
$sql[] = 'select xmlquery(\'for $i in ora:view("hr","locations")/ROW
          return $i/CITY\' returning content) from dual';
$sql[] = "select xmlquery('for \$i in ora:view(\"hr\",\"locations\")/ROW
          return \$i/CITY' returning content) from dual";

// Even with PHP's "Heredoc" syntax something will need escaping.
// Note the final END can't have leading whitespace, nor trailing
// whitespace after the semi-colon
$sql[] = <<<END
select xmlquery('for \$i in ora:view("hr","locations")/ROW
return \$i/CITY' returning content) from dual
END;

// But with PHP 5.3's new "Nowdoc" syntax no escaping is needed.
// To distinguish a Nowdoc from a Heredoc, the initial keyword END is
// enclosed in single quotes.
$sql[] = <<<'END'
select xmlquery('for $i in ora:view("hr","locations")/ROW
return $i/CITY' returning content) from dual
END;

// Thanks Gwynne and Dmitry for the new feature!

$c = oci_pconnect('hr', 'hrpwd', 'localhost/orcl');

foreach ($sql as $stmt) {
    do_query($c, $stmt);
}

function do_query($c, $stmt)
{
    $s = oci_parse($c, $stmt);
    oci_execute($s);
    while ($row = oci_fetch_array($s, OCI_ASSOC)) {
        foreach ($row as $item) {
            echo "$item ";
        }
        echo "\n";
    }
}

?>