As for the rumors that OEL is based on CentOS? Only in a universe where time flows backward. Hint: Centos 5.3 was announced on April 3rd, 2009 and OEL 5.3 was announced on January 28th, 2009, more than two months earlier. We have no relationship with CentOS and do not rely on them.

Update:Installation media now available via edelivery.oracle.com/linux

    sqlplus sergiodb/sergiodb@//127.0.0.1:1521/mvl

It looks to be a way of constructing a connect identifier that's new since database 10g Release 1. The syntax is as follows:

   [//]host[:port][/service_name]

The documentation sums it up nicely: The easy connection identifier can be used wherever you can use a full connection identifier, or a net service name. The easy syntax is less complex, and no tnsnames.ora entry is required.

There are several ways to deal with the software preinstallation requirements for the Oracle Database. And, while it's not very difficult to install the required RPMs, it can be somewhat awkward to do so in the correct dependency order.

To simplify this task, Oracle provides the oracle-validated RPM, discussed here, here, and here previously on this blog. The Oracle® Database Installation Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1) for Linux also describes how to install the oracle-validated RPM if you have access to Unbreakable Linux Network (ULN)

If you're installing Oracle Enterprise Linux, to run Oracle Database 10g or 11g, following the steps Avi outlined will save you time. Especially if you don't have access to ULN.

1. Follow the installation process as normal until you get to the first software selection screen (it lists a series of tasks that you can add support for, and has an option at the bottom: "Customize Later" and "Customize Now"
2. Select the "Customize Now" option and click Next





3. Select "Base System" in the left-hand list and then "System Tools" in the right hand list. Click the checkbox next to "System Tools", then click the "Optional Packages" button.









4. Scroll down and select the "oracle-validated" package and click "Close"

Avi continues: "You can now click "next" and continue the installation as normal. This also creates the oracle user/groups, sets up sysctl.conf, limits.conf, etc. It's fairly nifty." I followed these steps using the Oracle Enterprise Linux 5, Update 3 DVD I downloaded via edelivery.oracle.com, and it works like a breeze. Here's a final screen shot of the installer looking happy:

• OCFS2
• BTRFS
• Libstdc++
• NFS on IPv6
• RDS
• T10-DIF Data Integrity
• Etc.

I speak with prospects, customers, and partners on a regular basis and when I tell them that we have people at Oracle who's sole job it is to work on open source software, they are often very surprised. I'm glad this was posted.

To create this example, I used the following query based on the Issue Tracker data model:

select pname, 
       cnt_issues,
       ratio_to_report (cnt_issues) over () * 100 issues_chart,
       round (ratio_to_report (cnt_issues) over () * 100, 1) issues_ratio
  from (
select p.person_name pname, count(*) cnt_issues 
  from ht_issues i, ht_people p
 where i.assigned_to = p.person_id
 group by p.person_name
  )

I then edited the column attritbues for the ISSUES_CHART column and placed the following HTML in the the HTML Expression field:

<div style="width:100px;height:14px;background:#dddddd;
border-top:1px solid #aaaaaa;border-left:1px solid #aaaaaa;
border-bottom:1px solid #ffffff;border-right:1px solid #ffffff;">
<img src="/i/1px_trans.gif" width="#ISSUES_CHART#" height="14" border="0" style="background:#3f863f;"></div>

In this HTML with CSS style declarations, the width:100px in the beginning controls the maximum length in pixels of each bar in the chart and background:#dddddd makes the background grey. The width="#ISSUES_CHART#" controls the actual length of the green part of the bar by using the value of issues_chart from the result set.

If you don't have access to ULN, and you want to install oracle-validated including its dependencies, here's a quick way to set up yum to use an Oracle Enterprise Linux DVD that doesn't require copying all RPMs from the DVD. I performed the following steps using Oracle Enterprise Linux 5, Update 2 x86-64, as root:

1. # mkdir /media/disk
2. Insert EL5.2 DVD (or attach to your Oracle VM guest)
3. # mount /dev/cdrom /media/disk
4. Edit /etc/yum.conf, adding the following section:

   [EL5.2 DVD]
   name = Enterprise Linux 5.2 DVD
   baseurl=file:///media/disk/Server/
   gpgcheck=1
   enabled=1
   

5. # yum install oracle-validated

Note that edelivery.oracle.com/linux offers only free CD downloads of Oracle Enterprise Linux. The Unbreakable Linux Store. has DVDs for a nominal (shipping only) fee. DVDs are available as a free download starting with Oracle Enterprise Linux 4, Update 7. All other releases and updates can be for a nominal (shipping only) fee.

Here's where you can find it:

I could have used this type of feature to search through templates as well. If anyone from the APEX team is reading this...