OCI8 functions allow access to either Oracle 7 or Oracle 8 libraries. However, the Oracle 8 client libraries must be installed to compile this extension into PHP. There are a number of criteria tghat must be met when compiling OCI8 support into PHP. MNost important is the correct definition of the environment variable, ORACLE_HOME. If compiling PHP as an loadable Apache module it may also be necessary to specify the LD_PRELOAD and LD_LIBRARY_PATH before starting Apache. A common syptom of not specifying these environment variables is that Apache crashes on startup. Finally, various run time options can be set including ORACLE_SID, TWO_TASK and NLS_LANG. Your Oracle DBA can advise you if these settings are necessary and if so, what their values should be.
Table of Contents