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Author Profile

Christopher Jones

Senior Principal Product Manager

  • Christopher is a Senior Principal Product Manager working with the Oracle Database Data Access team primarily on APIs for scripting languages including Node.js, Python, PHP and the newly launched ODPI-C library for Oracle Database driver writers.  He has responsibilities for Oracle Call Interface (OCI) and related Oracle Database APIs; for Oracle Database clients such as Oracle Instant Client; and for general database adoption by developers, including championing Oracle Database XE.  He remains a lead maintainer of PHP's OCI8 extension for Oracle Database.  He co-released the popular book "The Underground PHP and Oracle Manual" and is the author of a number of technical articles.  Christopher has presented at big and small conferences around the world including the O'Reilly Open Source Convention and Oracle OpenWorld.  

    Twitter: @ghrd

    Email: christopher.jones@oracle.com

    Blog: http://blogs.oracle.com/opal/

    Christopher is a Senior Principal Product Manager working with the Oracle Database Data Access team primarily on APIs for scripting languages including Node.js, Python, PHP and the newly launched ODPI-C library for Oracle Database driver writers.  He has responsibilities for Oracle Call Interface (OCI) and related Oracle Database APIs; for Oracle Database clients such as Oracle Instant Client; and for general database adoption by developers, including championing Oracle Database XE.  He remains a lead maintainer of PHP's OCI8 extension for Oracle Database.  He co-released the popular book "The Underground PHP and Oracle Manual" and is the author of a number of technical articles.  Christopher has presented at big and small conferences around the world including the O'Reilly Open Source Convention and Oracle OpenWorld.  

    Twitter: @ghrd

    Email: christopher.jones@oracle.com

    Blog: http://blogs.oracle.com/opal/

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Recent Posts by Christopher Jones

Faster JSON with node-oracledb 5.1 and Oracle Database 21's new OSON storage format

  Release announcement: A new release of node-oracledb, the Node.js module for accessing Oracle Database, is available from npm. Top features: Support for Oracle Database 21's faster JSON features; automatic numeric suffixes for duplicate column names; more control for fetching Oracle Database Object and Collections.     To accompany the Oracle Database 21c release, we are happy to bring you the node-oracledb 5.1 update with: Enhanced JSON functionality to support Oracle Database...

Faster JSON with Python cx_Oracle 8.1 and Oracle Database 21's new OSON storage format

    cx_Oracle 8.1, the extremely popular Oracle Database interface for Python, is now Production on PyPI. cx_Oracle is an open source package for the Python Database API specification with many additions to support advanced Oracle Database features.     The top features in cx_Oracle 8.1 are: Support for Python 3.9 was added. Also support Python 3.5 was removed, since it has reached end-of-life. Enhanced JSON functionality to support Oracle Database 21's native OSON storage format for...

External and Proxy Connection Syntax Examples for node-oracledb

Here's a demo showing the connection syntax for node-oracledb in various proxy and external authentication connection scenarios. The script mentions Oracle 12.2 because that is what I was testing way back at the time I wrote the script. I was also checking an enhancement in 18.3. You may find that most syntaxes are usable with earlier Oracle versions. We also tweaked some behavior in node-oracleb 3.1, so if you have an older version you will see differences in cases 4 and...

Notarized macOS Oracle Instant Client Packages Make Installation Easier

Instant Client 19.8 for macOS is now available on OTN. This release introduces notarized DMG packages, making installation on recent macOS versions smoother: there is no need for manual approval of the shared libraries or running xattr commands. The ZIP files are still available, but I'm told that in some future version only DMGs will be released. Oracle Instant Client gives free, light-weight, and easily installed Oracle Database tools, libraries and SDKs. Update: Instant...

How to connect to Oracle Autonomous Cloud Databases

To connect your applications to an Oracle Autonomous Cloud Database - any of the Oracle Autonomous Database services like Autonomous Data Warehouse (ADW), Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP), or the new Oracle Autonomous JSON Database (AJD) - then you will need to download and use a 'wallet'. This gives mutual TLS which provides enhanced security for authentication and encryption. This post shows how to download a wallet and use it to connect to your Autonomous database...

How to use Python Flask with Oracle Database

This post shows how to install and create a Python Flask application for Oracle Database. Flask is a Python web framework. It is a 'micro framework' that doesn't enforce dependencies, so Oracle's excellent cx_Oracle module can be easily used to work with the database.    The demo app is a little service that lets you insert people's names into a 'user' table. You can query names by their id number. Flask apps typically handle multiple parallel application users, so it's important...

Stopping PHP "pecl install oci8" failing with "fatal error: oci8_dtrace_gen.h”

If installing the PHP OCI8 extension for Oracle Database using: $ pecl install oci8 fails with the error: fatal error: oci8_dtrace_gen.h: No such file or directory then set the PHP_DTRACE environment variable before doing the install: $ export PHP_DTRACE=yes $ pecl install oci8 The failure happens if your PHP installation was built with DTrace enabled. Due to some limitations with the PHP build & configuration files, the PECL OCI8 install needs the environment variable hint. What is...

Installing Go, Node.js, Python or PHP on Linux?

Are you installing Go, Node.js, Python or PHP on Linux? Then check out Oracle's sample Dockerfiles at github.com/oracle/docker-images/tree/master/OracleLinuxDevelopers. Even if you're not using Docker, these files show the Linux repos and packages to use on bare Oracle Linux. Let's create great software! PS you may be interested in the two part blog series Docker for Oracle Database Applications in Node.js and Python.

Installing XAMPP on macOS for PHP and Oracle Database

A question came up on Stack Overflow about how to install PHP OCI8 on XAMPP on macOS to connect to Oracle Database. (Windows XAMPP users should follow Installing XAMPP on Windows for PHP and Oracle Database). XAMPP is an open source package that contains Apache, PHP and many PHP 'extensions'.  This is what I did with XAMPP 7.4.9 on macOS Mojave. I had done a basic XAMPP native install (using xampp-osx-7.4.9-0-installer.dmg, not the VM) with the Developer files option selected...