Oracle 10g FAQ

Y

Yash

Bass
Dated: December 10, 2004

Q) Is there an Oracle control panel?
Yes there is. There is a reseller-level control panel that allows resellers to create end-user oracle accounts. The end-user control panel allows reseller end-users and our direct customers to manage their databases and perform basic tasks like creating new tables, fields, running queries, etc. However we do recommend customers to use SQL*Plus to manage their databases.

Q) I am a direct JodoHost customer, what charges are involved in using Oracle?
Our Windows and Linux packages include Oracle 10g and a certain number of users and tablespace. You'd only have to pay a $15/year fee to setup an oracle account to use those resources. You can buy additional oracle accounts, tablespace and users as defined in the add-on pricing.

Q) What charges are involved in reselling Oracle?
You'll be billed $15/Year for each Oracle account you setup. You are encouraged to pass this on to your customers. A certain amount of Oracle tablespace and users come free with each reseller plan. When you create end-user accounts from your Oracle Reseller CP, you can specify how many users and how much tablespace to give each customer. if you need more, you can either upgrade or purchase additional add-ons. We do offer special discount pricing for bulk purchase of oracle resources

Q) What is TableSpace and Users?
Tablespace is the amount of disk space you get on the oracle database server to create tables and store data. Oracle users are like database users for any database server such as MySQL. Normally, one user is sufficient to full-fill the requirements of a standard web application. Additional users and their rights over your tablespace can be created and modified from the end-user control panel

Q) How could I access my Oracle 10g database from the web server?
We support both the Oracle and Microsoft database drivers for Oracle 10g. Customers could use dsn-less connections (using for example the microsoft OLEDB oracle driver or Oracle Provider for OLEDB) or use a DSN (must be manually created, please open a ticket). An example of an Oracle connection string would be:

Code: 
Provider=OraOleDb.Oracle.1;Password=yourpassword;Persist Security Info=True;User ID=yourusername;Data Source=
(DESCRIPTION =(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=8.10.3.98)(PORT=1521))(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=JODO))
 
The control panel for direct JodoHost customers is available at http://oraclecp.jodoshared.com

Resellers can access the Oracle CP at http://204.14.106.156/
It is highly recommended that resellers create an A record (eg: oraclecp.myhost.com) pointing to this IP. This can be done in the following manner:

1) Log into your Reseller Admin CP
2) From E.Manager, click on DNS manager
3) Scroll down to Custom DNS records for DNS zone .......
4) Next to "Add a New A Record", click Go
5) In "Name", type in oraclecp. In "Data", type in 204.14.106.156
6) Click Submit

oraclecp.myhost.com should begin resolving shortly. Once it starts resolving, you can access your Oracle Reseller CP from this URL and your customers can access their end-user accounts from it as well
 
Good Oyster said:
Who would use Oracle, and what are its advantages over MySQL or MSSQL?
Click to expand...

I used to use Oracle 8i and use to love it as much as I loved SQL Server. oracle 10g has some huge improvements.

You cannot compare MSSQL and Oracle with MySQL, they are in a class of their own. There are no distinct advantages of Oracle over MSSQL or vice-versa, unless you are a huge business receiving tens of thousands of visitors every day (which both these products are designed to handle). It's more of a matter of preference i guess for smaller businesses and developers. I personally am going to use Oracle 10g as I'd love to include that on my resume of offered services. And I'm sure there are quite a few small companies out there looking to use Oracle 10g over SQL Server and I would definately love to sell that to them if they land of my hosting site :)

Oracle 10g sells at $100 to $200 per month at some sites I've seen.
 
Oracle 10g is basically geared to higher availability and we'll be shaping our Oracle 10g services to ensure that our customers get that. I agree with Ron that alot has to do with preference (like what you code in PHP or ASP.NET) but there are alot of tools within Oracle that make it a fantastic db platform. The clustering capabilities of Oracle are amazing but that wouldn't be applicable here at JodoHost since we will be operating them as single database servers.

However, a few other things I liked:
1) Database maintenance: In SQL Server, you need to either take a database offline or turn off sqlserver in order to perform certain management routines on databases. You can do almost every routine in oracle on a live server
2) FlashBack: This is an interesting feature. Allows you to restore a database to a specific time where only changed parts of the DB would be updated. Makes restore simpler, faster and problem-free
3) Backup: Backup and recovery are quite simplified. Server automatically takes care of all backups phasing out old ones
4) Standby databases: Oracle has the unique feature of a standby databases for customers which it completely automates. Found this really unique as well
5) Database level encryption: Encryption doesn't need to be handled in your web app, can be enabled directly at the database level. Makes things much faster


oracle has also performed much better than SQL Server in benchmark tests for speed. Oracle is also better know for its security

We are going to be bringing as much of Oracle as we can to our customers. We are one of the first companies really introducing Oracle 10g in the low-cost market and hence we need to set our own parameters and rules
 
i wont use it my self, fully, may test it etc.

but will provide it for my clients. another thing that will appeal to the clients..

are your silver plan, etc.. (not reseller plans). quite below the standards (cost wise), im just trying to get an idea of costing that other hosts provide the services at.

so i have an idea at what to sell them at..
 
Our reseller plans and all our plans are quite below the industry average now

We have priced based on what is profitable to us and we do project that Oracle should be quite profitable to us

Also, please don't forget that the sort of environment we are offering oracle in is not the sort of environment you may find in the high-end oracle web hosts charging a substantial amount of money. We do not support clustering or fail-over, we run our database servers as single isolated units such as our MySQL, PostreSQL or MSSQL servers.

Therefore, I would not recommend using Oracle with us for anything that requires mission-critical performance from the database server and that would need to deal with a huge amount of traffic and queries (that can't be hosted in a shared environment).

Our Oracle services are designed to be offered to customers who simply need a higher end database solution when compared to our other database platforms, or prefer using Oracle
 
When I log into my cp then click DNS Manager all I see is "Add DNS Zone".

I click on Add DNS Zone and this is what it says...

New DNS zone
Name
Admin e-mail(use dot (.) instead of commercial at (@))
Allow third domain level hosting
Master server ns.xxxxxxxx.com
Slave 1 server ns2.xxxxxxxx.com

This is what I have in my cp yet it is different from the example below. Could you please make this example a little bit clearer based on whats in my cp?

Regards
-Billy
-------------------------------------------------


Yash said:
The control panel for direct JodoHost customers is available at http://oraclecp.jodoshared.com

Resellers can access the Oracle CP at http://4.79.96.72/
It is highly recommended that resellers create an A record (eg: oraclecp.myhost.com) pointing to this IP. This can be done in the following manner:

1) Log into your Reseller Admin CP
2) From E.Manager, click on DNS manager
3) Scroll down to Custom DNS records for DNS zone .......
4) Next to "Add a New A Record", click Go
5) In "Name", type in oraclecp. In "Data", type in 4.79.96.72
6) Click Submit

oraclecp.myhost.com should begin resolving shortly. Once it starts resolving, you can access your Oracle Reseller CP from this URL and your customers can access their end-user accounts from it as well
Click to expand...
 
No, there it a little button there to edit the DNS, and not just add a zone.

If you need further help you will need to submit a ticket and we will help you out.
 
Im straight now ty. I notice alot of the descriptions that people use are not what its says in the cp. They mean the same thing im sure but still doesn't help the newbies much. Hence some confusion on my part from that aspect. :D
 
I sometimes go by memory, which is fine for me, but not for someone that doesn't know the full details of hsphere.

You did the right thing, if you have questions simply ask.
 
Too bad Oracle doesnt have an online administration application like MySQL's phpmyadmin. That will be God sent.

Bad news:
OCILogon and ora_logon functions are not available on the server.
We can't even connect to our Oracle DB without these functions.
 
Update:
I sent in a ticket regarding it and those guys fixed it within 1 hr....

Where can I get support of this level anywhere else? :D

Anyway I was wondering what I should use as DBname when trying to connect to Oracle from PHP

Heres my code:
PHP: 
$mydbname = 'ORACLE';
$oracleinstance = "(DESCRIPTION =(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=8.10.3.98)(PORT=1521))(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=".$mydbname."))";
if ($c=OCILogon("myusername", "secret_password", $oracleinstance)) {
  echo "Successfully connected to Oracle.\n";
  OCILogoff($c);
} else {
  $err = OCIError();
  echo "Oracle Connect Error " . $err[text];
}

Gives a very ugly error:
Oracle Connect Error PHP Warning: ocilogon(): _oci_open_server: ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier specified in D:\hshome\username\username.jodoshared.com\oracleconnect.php on line 2
Click to expand...

obviously theres something wrong here:

Also we need to specify ORACLE_SID,ORACLE_HOME and TNS_ADMIN as environment variables in PHP before connecting like below:

PHP: 
<?
PutEnv("ORACLE_SID=ORCL");
PutEnv("ORACLE_HOME=/app/oracle/product/10.0.0");
PutEnv("TNS_ADMIN=/var/opt/oracle");
?>

What should we enter?

Please enlighten and thank in advance.
 
Guys,

the Jodo staff was kind enough to help me with the connection to the Oracle DB, which happens to be the most challenging part due to lack of info. I spent countless hrs trying to guess the right environment variables and connection string.

Here is the right way to do it.
I hope you guys can benefit from it.

Thanks JODOdudes!

PHP: 
putenv("ORACLE_SID=jodo");
$username = "YOUR USERNAME";
$passwd = "YOUR PW";
$db="(DESCRIPTION = (ADDRESS_LIST = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = 8.10.3.98)(PORT = 1521)) )    (CONNECT_DATA =(SID = jodo)(SERVER = SHARED)))";
$conn = OCILogon($username,$passwd,$db);
if (!$conn)
{
   echo "Connection failed";
   echo "Error Message: [" . OCIError($conn) . "]";
   exit;
}
else
{
   echo "Connected!";
}
 
I am very new to oracle, but I am sure there is a big market for here.

I have some questions questions here:

Where can you add an oracle account and set the tablespace limits for each oracle Account. Also how can you increase the limit on the table space for an account for the reseller account, did not see this in my end user panel?

Can you have diferent oracle db's inside one account? are there fees in this?

Oracle Server Specs?

Can we purchase an orcale dedicated server? Maybe an oracle dedicated server with a failover?

Can we preview the control panel or even better can our clients preview it?

Sorry for the questions, I am sure they will help me and other people aswell.

thanks
 
Where can you add an oracle account and set the tablespace limits for each oracle Account. Also how can you increase the limit on the table space for an account for the reseller account, did not see this in my end user panel?
# We have developed a custom control panel for Oracle database services with basic functionality. Find it here http://204.14.106.156/ (for resellers)

Can you have diferent oracle db's inside one account? are there fees in this?
# Setup fees is per Oracle enduser account basis ($15/account/year).

Oracle Server Specs?
# Its a dedicated Oracle 10g database server.

Can we purchase an orcale dedicated server? Maybe an oracle dedicated server with a failover?
# You can get a dedicated server and get Oracle installed on it (if you have license).

Can we preview the control panel or even better can our clients preview it?
# Trial is not available for Oracle accounts. Since it is a custom built control panel, it doesn't have preview capabilities.
 
Do you support all those features as listed by Yash on previous page like Database maintenance, Flashback, Backup, Standby databases and database level encryption?

If yes then can end user perform these operations from oracle control panel or he needs to contact jodohost support staff to do that?
 
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