Step 1: Grab the binary from http://www.couch.io/get
Step 2: Unzip to your hard drive (I unzipped to C:\ and renamed the extracted folder to couchdb).
Step 3: Go into the bin directory and run couchdb.bat. This will launch the Erlang command line and run CouchDB. You should see a DOS window with the message “CouchDB 1.0.0 – prepare to relax…”.
Step 4: Open your browser and point it to http://127.0.0.1:5984/_utils/ to launch Futon
Step 5: From the navigation bar on the right hand side, click on “Test Suite” and at the top of the test suite’s page, click the “Run All” button to start the tests. Leave your browser do its thing (it’ll lock up while it’s performing the tests) and all going well, each of 66 tests should return with a success message.
Step 6: Click on “Overview” at the top right of the browser and start creating CouchDB databases!

Enjoy.

Nested tables are a type of PL/SQL collection which may be compared to arrays or objects in other programming languages. One of the advantages of using nested tables over other PL/SQL collection types is that they don’t have a fixed size, and they can be stored in a database table (not just in a program unit, like regular PL/SQL tables or associative arrays). The best way to show how nested tables work is to use an example, so let’s dive right in and set up our database for the tags example.

The first thing we want to do is create the nested table type in our database. I’m going to keep it nice and simple and name my type “tags”:

CREATE TYPE tags IS TABLE OF VARCHAR2(50);

If you are familiar with PL/SQL tables, the above should look very similar to the syntax for creating a PL/SQL table, but without the typical “index by binary_integer” bit stuck at the end. With our type created, we can now go ahead and use this in a database table. I’m going to create a table named “post”, which one might use to store blog posts. This table will have three columns – post_id, post_title and post_tags.

CREATE TABLE post (
post_id            NUMBER(11),
post_title        VARCHAR2(50),
post_tags        tags
) NESTED TABLE post_tags STORE AS tags_table;

Great – you now have a database table with a column of type “tags” which is itself a table. The next thing we want to do is insert some records into our new table.

INSERT INTO post(post_id, post_title, post_tags)
VALUES(1, 'First Post', tags('oracle', 'tags', 'example'));

INSERT INTO post(post_id, post_title, post_tags)
VALUES(2, 'Second Post', tags('oracle', 'tags'));

INSERT INTO post(post_id, post_title, post_tags)
VALUES(3, 'Third Post', tags('oracle'));

COMMIT;

As you can see from the above INSERT statements, inserting tags into our nested table is very straightforward, we simply tell Oracle that we are using the type “tags” and pass the VARCHAR2 values we want to store to it. If you try to insert a tag with over 50 characters you will get an error as we defined the tags table as a table of VARCHAR2(50) fields. So what does our new table look like when we go to retrieve data from it? Let’s take a look.

SELECT * FROM post;

You should see output like the following

     POST_ID POST_TITLE                                                  POST_TAGS
------------ ----------------------------------------------------------- ---------
           1 First Post                                                  <Object>
           2 Second Post                                                 <Object>
           3 Third Post                                                  <Object>

Hardly ideal is it? Fortunately, we can use the TABLE function to easily get back a list of tags for a given post quite easily. Try the following SQL statement:

SELECT column_value
FROM TABLE(
    SELECT post_tags FROM post WHERE post_id = 1
);

This outputs the following:

COLUMN_VALUE
--------------------------------------------------
oracle
tags
example

Try the statement again, but this time pass in the post_id value for another row. This is useful, as it gives us a means of getting the tag data out of the database, but what if we want to get back all the tags when retrieving the other columns in the table? This requires a bit more work, but it’s not exactly complex:

SELECT p.post_id, p.post_title, t.column_value
FROM post p, TABLE(
    SELECT post_tags FROM post WHERE post_id = p.post_id
) t;

The above statement should produce the following:

     POST_ID POST_TITLE                                              COLUMN_VALUE
------------ ------------------------------------------------------- ---------------
           1 First Post                                              oracle
           1 First Post                                              tags
           1 First Post                                              example
           2 Second Post                                             oracle
           2 Second Post                                             tags
           3 Third Post                                              oracle

A step in the right direction, but the post_id and post_title are duplicated for each tag for that record. Surely there’s a way of outputting all the tags on a single row, joining them together with a delimiting character such as a comma? There are a number of ways of doing this, from using a stored function to using 11g’s WITHIN GROUP feature. The method with the least code that works on 9i and above is to use the XMLAGG function to produce the concatenated result. The SQL to achieve the desired result in this manner is as follows:

SELECT p.post_id, p.post_title,
    RTRIM(XMLAGG(XMLELEMENT(e, t.column_value || ',')).EXTRACT('//text()'), ',') tags
FROM post p, TABLE(
    SELECT post_tags FROM post WHERE post_id = p.post_id
) t
GROUP BY p.post_id, p.post_title;

This produces the following result:

     POST_ID POST_TITLE                               TAGS
------------ ---------------------------------------- -----------------------
           1 First Post                               oracle,tags,example
           2 Second Post                              oracle,tags
           3 Third Post                               oracle

So far we haven’t seen any particular reason why one would necessarily use a nested table to store tags over any other method. For me, the primary advantage is that it makes it very simple to perform group functions on the tags – making it ridiculously easy to generate tag clouds based on how many times a tag is used. In the above example, we can easily see that the tag “oracle” is used 3 times, “tags” is used twice and “example” only once. But in a scenario where you have many posts and many, many tags, it is impossible to do this counting in your head. Let’s take a look at just how easy it is to do this counting with our nested table.

SELECT t.column_value, COUNT(*)
FROM post p, TABLE(
    SELECT post_tags FROM post WHERE post_id = p.post_id
) t
GROUP BY t.column_value;

And the output:

COLUMN_VALUE                                         COUNT(*)
-------------------------------------------------- ----------
tags                                                        2
example                                                     1
oracle                                                      3

Want to order the results? Simply add an ORDER BY clause and Bob’s your uncle.

SELECT t.column_value, COUNT(*)
FROM post p, TABLE(
    SELECT post_tags FROM post WHERE post_id = p.post_id
) t
GROUP BY t.column_value
ORDER BY 2 DESC

The result:

COLUMN_VALUE                                         COUNT(*)
-------------------------------------------------- ----------
oracle                                                      3
tags                                                        2
example                                                     1

For me, this is the main reason I store tags in a nested table – but there are other advantages, too. What if you are editing a post and you want to change one of the tags? Nested tables make this simple:

UPDATE TABLE(SELECT post_tags FROM post WHERE post_id = 1)
SET column_value = 'sample'
WHERE column_value = 'example'

Similarly, if you wanted to delete a tag from a row, this is also very straightforward:

DELETE FROM TABLE(
    SELECT post_tags FROM post WHERE post_id = 1
)
WHERE column_value = 'tags';

Nested tables are a powerful PL/SQL collection type, and you can do even more powerful things with them if you start using PL/SQL procedures and functions. But the beauty about nested tables for me is how powerful and flexible they are using nothing but raw SQL statements. For further information about nested tables and other PL/SQL collection types, see the following resources:

• http://www.developer.com/db/article.php/10920_3379271_1/Oracle-Programming-with-PLSQL-Collections.htm
• http://www.dba-oracle.com/t_display_multiple_column_values_same_rows.htm
• http://www.devshed.com/c/a/Oracle/Database-Interaction-with-PLSQL-Nested-Tables/
• http://soft.buaa.edu.cn/oracle/bookshelf/Oreilly/prog2/ch19_01.htm
• http://sql-plsql.blogspot.com/2007/05/oracle-plsql-nested-tables.html
• http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/appdev.920/a96624/05_colls.htm
• http://www.smart-soft.co.uk/Oracle/oracle-plsql-tutorial-part-9.htm

Before I begin, I’ll start off by saying that this is a very simple example of scheduling tweets. It will give you a very simple introduction to the Twitter API, the curl tool and the Windows Task Scheduler. There is no pretty graphical user interface, and configuring your scheduled tweets is fairly manual to say the least. If you would like more features, why not incorporate them into your own little application? I’m certainly thinking of doing so. Also – I believe there is a WordPress plugin that will post a tweet when your blog post is published – if this fits your needs, great! Again – this is merely a simple example of what you can do with the Twitter API, it’s not intended to be the holy grail solution for scheduling tweets!

For the sake of this tutorial I am going to assume you’re using the Windows operating system. If you’re using Mac OS, Linux or another Unix variant, the technique used in this tutorial could be easily amended to work with cron. If enough people demand a Mac/Linux version of this tutorial, I’ll write one.

The first thing you’re going to need to do is download cURL. This command-line utility allows you to transfer files over a host of internet protocols, and is perfect for interacting with the Twitter API. It is free and open source, and is available for a wide range of platforms. Visit the cURL download page and download the No-SSL version provided by Daniel Stenburg. At the time of writing, the latest version available was 7.19.4. Once you have downloaded the ZIP file, extract the contents to c:\curl. If you need an archiving utility, download the excellent 7-Zip. That’s all there is to installing cURL! To test it out, open a command prompt (Start->Programs->Accessories->Command Prompt) and change to the curl directory (cd \curl). Enter the following command:

curl http://www.google.ie

This should spit back a ream of continuous HTML code. This is the HTML source for the Google.ie home page. What you see should be similar to the screenshot below:

Figure 1 - cURL'ing Google.ie

Now that we have verified that cURL is working, let’s see how we can use it to interact with the Twitter API. The Twitter API is what is known as a RESTful web service, meaning that it can be queryed using a URI, and will return data in a particular MIME type. Twitter can return data in the XML, JSON, RSS or Atom MIME types. Let’s start working with Twitter by retrieving the Public Timeline in RSS format. In your command prompt, issue the following command:

curl http://twitter.com/statuses/public_timeline.rss

This should bring back the RSS feed for the Twitter Public Timeline, as seen in the following screenshot:

Figure 2 - cURL'ing the Twitter Public Timeline

Great – but we’re not very interested in the public timeline are we? Let’s tell Twitter who we are and ask for the timeline of only the people we are following. This time, we will ask for a response in the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) format. Please be sure to substitute your own Twitter username and password for the values below. And no, my Twitter password is not “password”!

curl -u joelennon:password http://twitter.com/statuses/friend_timeline.json

In this example, we are using HTTP authentication to tell Twitter who we are, and asking it to return a JSON representation of our friends’ timeline. For a sample of the output, see Figure 3 below:

Figure 3 - cURL'ing our Friends Timeline

At this point, you may be wondering what use all of the mumbo-jumbo we are receiving as a response is to us. In fact, in this tutorial, it’s not much use to us at all as we are only interested in updating Twitter. If we wanted to display our own, our friends or public tweets however, we would be able to parse this information and display it in a readable format. The Twitter API provides an array of methods for pulling back information like this, including:

• public_timeline
• friends_timeline
• user_timeline
• show
• replies
• friends
• followers
• many more…

If you would like to delve deeper into these methods, and the Twitter API in general, check out the REST API Documentation on the Twitter API Wiki. It has a host of information and examples on how to use the Twitter API. Now let’s get back to the tutorial!

Up until this point, we have concentrated mainly on retrieving data from Twitter. But we want to send updates to Twitter! Luckily, cURL allows us to neatly send POST data along with our HTTP request. To post an update, issue the following command in your command prompt:

curl -u joelennon:password -d status="Testing out using cURL for Twitter updates" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

As previously, you will receive a response in the format you specified in the request (in this case, XML). This should look similar to the screenshot below:

Figure 4 - Posting a Twitter Update

But, more importantly, if you check out your Twitter page, you will see that your timeline has been updated with a new post – you guessed it, the one we just sent. To change the content of the post, simply change the text between the quote symbols in Listing 4 above. I think  you’ll agree, using the Twitter API with curl is pretty easy! Now let’s take things a step further and create a script that will post the update for us, so that we don’t have to issue the long curl command every time we want to post.

Open a text editor (Notepad will do fine) and add the command from Listing 4 above to it. Feel free to change the status text to something else! Now go to File -> Save As and save it as “twitter.bat” in the C:\curl directory. Be sure to include the quotes when you are saving the file, otherwise Notepad will probably try to save it as .txt file, and you’ll end up with a file named twitter.bat.txt instead!

Now go back to your command prompt and ensure that you have changed in to the C:\curl directory. Enter the following command:

twitter.bat

Hey presto, your Twitter update has been posted! While this is nice and short, it’s still a bit of a pain as we have to modify the twitter.bat file everytime to change the status text. Let’s fix that. Re-open twitter.bat in Notepad, and change the contents to the following:

@ECHO OFF
SET STATUS=%*
c:\curl\curl.exe -u joelennon:password -d status="%STATUS%" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

We have changed the batch file so that it does not display the command each time it runs, and it sets a variable, STATUS to all the arguments entered when the command is executed. We then use this STATUS variable in our curl command instead of static text. This allows us to enter the status text we wish to update Twitter with when we run our script. This time, try running the command in Listing 7 below:

twitter.bat Passing arguments to the batch file

Well would you look at that, it’s submitted the Twitter update using the text we specified after the twitter.bat command! Take a step back and look at what you’ve just created – a Twitter updater client! Sure it’s basic, but it works! Now that we have the script to post our Twitter updates created, let’s look at how we can schedule it to automatically post an update at a specified date and time.

A feature of the Windows operating system that is often overlooked is the Task Scheduler. This allows you to create scheduled tasks that will run on a certain date and time. This tool has a GUI interface and a command-line interface for scheduling tasks, but it can be quite complex. Instead, we are going to use the at command, which is included with any NT-based Windows platform (NT/2000/XP/Vista/Server). This is a very basic and simple to use command-line scheduler.

I am writing this particular paragraph at 2:26pm. The line below will automatically send a tweet at 2:27pm. Change the time to the 24-hour value for a time that’s a few minutes into the future for you (otherwise it will send the next time 2:27pm comes around, and you might have to wait a long time to test it worked!)

at 14:27 cmd /c c:\curl\twitter.bat This is a scheduled tweet!

The at command is quite simple, but it has some nice features that allow you to schedule tasks to run at set intervals – for example every Monday at 9.00am. For further information, see this Microsoft Knowledgebase article on the at command. Note in the above example that we preceded our twitter script file with the command “cmd /c”. This might not mean anything to you, but it is required in order for the script to work, as we are running a batch file and not a regular executable. This basically tells the scheduler to start a command window, run the specified command and close the command window when done.

Congratulations, you now have a way of automating your tweets so that they are posted at a set date/time or even at a regular interval. It’s not the prettiest solution in the world, but it’s simple and you have probably learned a bit about the Twitter API (and batch files and the scheduling tasks!) in the process. If you have any questions or need some help with this, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help you out!

1. Log in to your WordPress Administration Interface (usually http://www.yoursite.com/wp-admin)
2. On the navigation bar on the left hand side of the page, click on the Arrow next to Plugins. You should see an expanded submenu.
3. From this submenu, click on “Editor” to bring up the Plugin Editor
4. You should now see a large text editor with the code for the first of your plugins showing in it (Akismet in my case). On the right hand side should be a list of plugins. Find “Twitter for WordPress” in this list and click on the link.
5. You should now be able to edit “twitter.php” in the text editor. Scroll down just below the copyright notice until you find the line:  define('MAGPIE_CACHE_AGE', 120);
6. Add a new line under this and paste the following: define('MAGPIE_CACHE_ON', false);
7. Click the “Update” button at the bottom of the page to update the plugin file. That’s it, your twitter plugin should now be showing new tweets once again.

Note: your plugin file will need to be writable in order to perform the above procedure. If it’s not, either make it writable using an FTP client or SSH, or else simply edit the file manually by downloading it with FTP or via SSH. As I said above, this is almost definitely not the best solution to this problem, but one that should make do until an official fix is released by the plugin author.

Unless otherwise specified, prices are per year and include VAT @ 21.5%. Please note that all .co.uk prices are for 2 years, as this is the only registration period allowed for these domain names.

If your company is not listed here and you believe it should be, please leave a comment and I’ll add it to the list.

AlwaysAmber

Website URL: http://www.alwaysamber.ie/
Sales Email: office@alwaysamber.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 066 916 6091

.ie – €24.99 per year
.co.uk – €13.98 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €7.49 per year

Blacknight Solutions

Website URL: http://www.blacknight.com/
Sales Email: sales@blacknight.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1850 929 929
Sales Phone (UK): 0844 484 9361

.ie – €30.36 per year
.co.uk – €9.72 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €7.23 per year

BT Ireland

Website URL: http://www.btireland.ie/
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 924 929

.ie/.co.uk/.com/.net/.org - €60.75 per year

Darklite-SCE

Website URL: http://www.darklite.ie/
Sales Phone (Ireland): 021 436 9317

.ie – €54.68 per year
.co.uk – €30.38 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €30.38 per year

Digiweb

Website URL: http://hosting.digiweb.ie/
Sales Email: hosting@digiweb.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 941 000
Sales Phone (UK): 0800 196 6436

.ie – €36.44 per year
.co.uk – €12.14 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €8.49 per year

Eircom

Website URL: http://business.eircom.net/
Sales Email: Business.solutions@eircom.net
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 242 508

.ie – €81.41 per year
.co.uk – €24.30 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €12.15 per year

IrishDomains.com

Website URL: http://www.irishdomains.com/
Sales Email: sales@irishdomains.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 366 246

.ie – €83.84 per year
.co.uk – €11.54 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €11.54 per year

LetsHost.ie

Website URL: http://www.letshost.ie
Sales Email: sales@letshost.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1890 719 461

.ie – €24.29 per year
.co.uk – €12.14 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €7.28 per year

MyHost.ie

Website URL: http://www.myhost.ie/
Sales Email: sales@myhost.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 061 749 922

.ie – €36.39 per year
.co.uk – €24.28 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €12.14 per year

Register365

Website URL: http://www.register365.com
Sales Email: sales@register365.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1890 944 500
Sales Phone (UK): +44 1905 342 333

.ie – €30.31 per year
.co.uk – €16.89 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €9.66 per year

Register.ie

Website URL: http://www.register.ie
Sales Email: sales@novara.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1850 668 272

.ie – €85.04 per year
.co.uk – €24.28 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €18.21 per year

SpiralHosting.com

Website URL: http://www.spiralhosting.com/
Sales Email: sales@spiralhosting.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 01 657 1821
Sales Phone (UK): 028 9002 5008

.ie – €48.60 per year
.co.uk – €17.01 every two years
.com/.net/.org – €10.02 per year
.info – €8.51 per year

WebHost.ie

Website URL: http://www.webhost.ie/
Sales Email: sales@webhost.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 01 494 8034

.ie – €35.24 per year
.co.uk – €24.30 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €10.94 per year

Web World

Website URL: http://www.webworld.ie/
Sales Email: sales@webworld.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 01 495 1112

.ie – €35.24 per year
.co.uk – €21.87 every two years
.com/.net/.org/.info – €9.72 per year

The services offered and prices listed in this article were taken directly from each service provider’s website on Wednesday, 10th December 2008 at 8:51pm. The providers are listed in alphabetical order. All prices include VAT @ 21.5% unless otherwise stated. I have listed prices per month where a monthly price was available. In cases where a monthly price was not available, I have quoted prices per year.

If you want your company to be added to this list, or if any of the information I have listed below is incorrect, please leave a comment on this post and I will update it.

Blacknight Solutions

Website URL: http://www.blacknight.com/
Sales Email: sales@blacknight.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1850 929 929
Sales Phone (UK): 0844 484 9361

Blacknight offer three shared hosting packages. All of these packages offer a choice of Linux or Windows operating systems, and offer MySQL 4/5, PostgreSQL 7 and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 databases. Their Minimus package allows up to 30 databases, Medius allows 60 and Maximus allows 90. PHP support is included, and .NET 2.0/3.5 support is there on Windows packages.

Minimus (€6.01 per month) – 10gb disk space, 100gb/mo bandwidth, unlimited email accounts
Medius (€10.87 per month) - 20gb disk space, 200gb/mo bandwidth, unlimited email accounts
Maximus (€18.16 per month) - 30gb disk space, 300gb/mo bandwidth, unlimited email accounts

Darklite-SCE

Website URL: http://www.darklite.ie/
Sales Phone (Ireland): 021 436 9317

Darklite-SCE offer Linux and Windows web hosting. All of their plans come with MySQL databases included, and their Windows Business and Windows Enterprise include a Microsoft SQL Server database also. On their Linux platforms PHP and Perl is supported, and on their Windows packages is support for .NET 2.0.

Personal (€4.80 per month) – 200mb disk space, 3gb/mo bandwidth, 100 email accounts
Basic (€15.19 per month) – 500mb disk space, 10gb/mo bandwidth, 250 email accounts
Business (€30.38 per month) - 1gb disk space, 20gb/mo bandwidth, 500 email accounts
Enterprise (€42.53 per month) - 5gb disk space, 50gb/mo bandwidth, 1000 email accounts

Digiweb

Website URL: http://hosting.digiweb.ie/
Sales Email: hosting@digiweb.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 941 000
Sales Phone (UK): 0800 196 6436

Digiweb offer four shared web hosting packages, with prices varying from €24.29 per year to €364.49 per year. With the exception of the Starter Hosting package, all of Digiweb’s hosting plans offer a choice of Windows or Linux operating systems, PHP and MySQL support on Linux, and ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 support on Windows. There is no option to pay monthly for the StarterHosting or AdvancedHosting packages.

Starter Hosting (€24.29 per year) – 10gb disk space, 30gb/mo bandwidth, 50 email accounts
Advanced Hosting (€48.59 per year) – 15gb disk space, 100gb/mo bandwidth, 250 email accounts
Business Hosting (€12.14 per month) - 20gb disk space, 150gb/mo bandwidth, 500 email accounts
Enterprise Hosting (€36.44 per month) - 30gb disk space, 250gb/mo bandwidth, unlimited email accounts

Host.ie

Website URL: http://www.host.ie/
Sales Email: sales@novara.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1850 668 272

Host.ie (a division of Novara.ie) offers six different shared hosting plans. Three of these are Linux-based packages, and three are Windows-based packages. The Linux packages feature support for PHP and Perl, and in the case of the Business and Professional variants, also include 5 and 10 MySQL databases, respectively. Their Windows packages feature ASP.NET 2.0 support and Microsoft SQL Server 2000 database support is an optional extra on the Business and Professional variants (though MySQL databases are included with these packages, as per the Linux packages). If you choose to pay for a Host.ie package on a monthly basis, a setup fee will apply. At the time of writing, there appeared to be no option to pay monthly for Linux packages listed on their website.

Linux Basic (€121.49 per year) – 150mb disk space, 3gb/mo bandwidth, 150 email accounts
Linux Business (€242.99 per year) – 300mb disk space, 5gb/mo bandwidth, 300 email accounts
Linux Professional (€364.49 per year) - 500mb disk space, 8gb/mo bandwidth, 500 email accounts
Windows Basic (€12.14 per month) - 150mb disk space, 3gb/mo bandwidth, 150 email accounts
Windows Business (€24.29 per month) - 300mb disk space, 5gb/mo bandwidth, 300 email accounts
Windows Professional (€36.45 per month) - 500mb disk space, 8gb/mo bandwidth, 500 email accounts

HostIreland

Website URL: http://stresa.hostireland.com/
Sales Email: sales@hostireland.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 925 262

HostIreland have two hosting packages on offer – the Clubman and the Business Premier. HostIreland’s plans run on Linux servers and feature PHP and Perl support with unlimited MySQL databases included in both hosting packages. HostIreland’s website only shows prices per year.

Clubman Plan (€115.36 per year) – 1gb disk space, Bandwidth not specified, 100 email accounts
Business Premium Plan (€182.19 per year) – 1gb disk space, unlimited bandwidth, 100 email accounts

IEInternet.com

Website URL: http://www.ieinternet.com/
Sales Email: sales@ieinternet.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 01 280 5000

IEInternet.com have four hosting plans available, three of which run on Linux servers along with a single Windows-based option. IEInternet do not quote any prices per month on their website. PHP and Perl are supported on all three of their Linux plans, and MySQL databases are included with their Business and Application plans. The Windows plan includes support for ASP and support for Microsoft SQL Server databases. There are no SQL Server databases included with the plan, however – these are available as an optional extra.

SOHO (€138.51 per year) – 20mb disk space, 1gb/mo bandwidth, 1 email account
Business (€291.60 per year) – 100mb disk space, 2gb/mo bandwidth, 20 email accounts
Windows (€291.60 per year) - 50mb disk space, 2gb/mo bandwidth, 1 email account
Application (€554.04 per year) - 250mb disk space, 4gb/mo bandwidth, 100 email accounts

IrishDomains.com

Website URL: http://www.irishdomains.com/
Sales Email: sales@irishdomains.com
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1800 366 246

IrishDomains.com offer four Linux-based shared hosting packages. All of their packages offer PHP and Perl support. Their Business 10, Advanced 15 and Developer 25 packages all come with unlimited MySQL databases. MySQL is an optional extra on the Starter 5 package. At the time of writing, there did not appear to be an option to pay on a monthly basis.

Linux Starter 5 (€181.04 per year) – 1gb disk space, 10gb/mo bandwidth, 50 email accounts
Linux Business 10 (€241.79 per year) – 2.5gb disk space, 15gb/mo bandwidth, 100 email accounts
Linux Advanced 15 (€363.29 per year) - 5gb disk space, 20gb/mo bandwidth, 150 email accounts
Linux Developer 25 (€606.29 per year) - 10gb disk space, 25gb/mo bandwidth, 250 email accounts

LetsHost.ie

Website URL: http://www.letshost.ie
Sales Email: sales@letshost.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 1890 719 461

LetsHost.ie offer one main shared hosting packages, the Lets Host “Complete” Plan. This hosting plan is offered on a Linux platform and includes PHP support, SSH access and unlimited MySQL databases.

Lets Host “Complete” Plan (€9.60 per month) – 12gb disk space, 100gb/mo bandwidth, unlimited email accounts

MyHost.ie

Website URL: http://www.myhost.ie/
Sales Email: sales@myhost.ie
Sales Phone (Ireland): 061 749 922

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Once again I will be assuming throughout this guide that you have followed my Oracle XE installation tutorial. If you didn’t, you may need to change usernames, passwords and service names to fit your setup. I will be walking through the setup process on a Windows XP machine, but it should be similar on another Windows version. Let’s get started!

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are looking for the download for mod_owa, please note that the website for it has moved since this blog post was originally written. You can now find mod_owa on the Oracle OSS website at the following URL: http://oss.oracle.com/projects/mod_owa/dist/documentation/modowa.htm. I have updated this blog post to reflect this change.

The first thing you’ll need to do is download the relevant software. The easiest way to install Apache is to download and run the installer binary from the Apache website. At the time of writing, the latest stable version of Apache available is 2.2.9, but again the process should be similar for whatever version you are installing. You can download Apache from http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi. You will also need to grab the Apache PL/SQL Gateway Module (mod_owa) from http://oss.oracle.com/projects/mod_owa/dist/documentation/modowa.htm. Click on the link for “Zip file for Windows”, which includes the source code and binaries for the Windows version of Apache.

The first stage in setting up our PL/SQL web development environment is the installation of the Apache web server. To start the installation, run the installer package you downloaded earlier (the filename should be something like apache_2.2.9-win32-x86-no_ssl-r2.msi). The screen should look similar to the one in Figure 3a below:

Figure 3a - Apache HTTP Server 2.2 Installation Wizard

Click “Next >” to continue. On the screen that follows, read the license agreement and if you are happy with the terms, select “I accept the terms in the license agreement” and click “Next >” to move on to the readme screen, from which you can simply press “Next >” again. You should now be presented with the following screen:

Figure 3b - Apache HTTP Server 2.2 Installer - Server Information

Unless you are installing Apache for production use, it doesn’t matter too much what you enter into Network Domain, Server Name or Administrator’s email, but be sure to select the option to Install Apache “for All Users, on Port 80, as a Service”. Installing on Port 8080 would likely cause a conflict between Apache and the Application Express software that comes with Oracle XE, which runs on port 8080. As soon as you are ready, click “Next >” to continue.

Figure 3c - Apache HTTP Server 2.2 Setup Type

On the “Setup Type” screen, you can safely leave the default option of “Typical” selected and click “Next >” to continue with the installation. Advanced users may wish to tweak their installation using the Custom option, but for the sake of this tutorial, there is no need to do so.

Figure 3d - Apache HTTP Server 2.2 Destination Folder

The Apache installer will now ask you where to install Apache on your hard disk. By default Apache is installed into a subfolder of the Program Files folder, but I find it easier to install Apache into a folder just beneath the root of the C drive, which I usually name “httpd”. You can safely accept the default destination, but from here on I will refer to all Apache configuration files as if you chose to install to C:\httpd\. To install to this directory, click on the “Change” button as in Figure 3d, which should popup a screen like the one in Figure 3e. In the textbox for Folder Name, enter C:\httpd\ and click “OK”. This will close the popup window and return you to the screen shown in Figure 3d. You can now click on “Next >”.

Figure 3e - Apache HTTP Server 2.2 - Change Current Destination Folder

You can now safely click on the “Install” button, which will start the installation process. This should not take long, especially if you are using a modern PC. During the installation you should see a screen similar to that in Figure 3f below.

Figure 3f - Installing Apache HTTP Server 2.2.9

When the installation has completed, simply click the “Finish” button to exit the installer. You should now have a new icon in your system tray, like the one highlighted in Figure 3g. It should have a tiny green play symbol in it. If it has a red square stop symbol instead, left-click on the icon, and from the Apache2.2 menu, click “Start” to start the Apache service.

Figure 3g - Apache icon in System Tray

Before we move on to installing mod_owa, we will first check that Apache is up and running and functioning correctly. To do so, open your favourite web browser (I use Firefox), enter http://localhost/ in the address bar and press enter. If Apache is working, you will see a message like in Figure 3h:

Figure 3h - Apache Test Page - It Works!

Now that we have Apache up and running, it is time to install our PL/SQL gateway, mod_owa. The first thing we need to do is to unzip the archive we downloaded earlier, usually named windows_all.zip. You don’t need to worry about where you extract the files to, as we are only really interested in one of them. When the archive has extracted, open the folder you extracted them, and go into the modowa folder. From here, double click on apache22 and right-click on mod_owa.dll and click Copy.

We will now paste this into the modules folder under the Apache installation directory. Hold down the Windows key and press R to open the Run dialog and enter C:\httpd\modules\ as shown in Figure 3i:

Figure 3i - Open Apache modules folder

This will open the modules folder. Go to the Edit menu and click on Paste to put a copy of the mod_owa.dll file here. Now that we have stored the module DLL file, we now need to tell Apache to load this module into the web server and set up a new Apache Location, which will act like an Oracle Document Access Descriptor (DAD) from where we can run our PL/SQL web applications. If none of this makes any sense to you at this point, don’t worry about it, just follow the instructions closely and you’ll be fine.

To open the Apache configuration file (httpd.conf) open the Run dialog once again (Windows+R or Start->Run). This time, enter notepad c:\httpd\conf\httpd.conf and click the OK button. Notepad should launch, with the Apache config file opened and ready for editing. Scroll down to the bottom of this file (or hold down the Ctrl button and press the End button) and below all other code, insert the text from listing 3a:

LoadModule owa_module modules/mod_owa.dll

<Location /somando>
    AllowOverride  None
    Options        None
    SetHandler     owa_handler
    OwaUserid      somando/somando1
    OwaNLS         WE8ISO8859P1
    OwaDiag        COMMAND ARGS CGIENV POOL SQL MEMORY
    OwaLog         "/usr/local/apache/logs/mod_owa.log"
    OwaPool        20
    OwaStart       "doc_pkg.homepage"
    OwaDocProc     "doc_pkg.readfile"
    OwaDocPath     docs
    OwaUploadMax   10M
    OwaCharset     "iso-8859-1"
    order          deny,allow
    allow          from all
</Location>
/

When you have added the text above to your httpd.conf file, save the file, and on the Apache icon in your system tray, left-click and from the Apache2.2 menu choose the “Restart” option to restart the Apache service. If all has gone well, Apache will restart just fine and you will have a play icon in your system tray icon once again. If you did not follow my guide to install Oracle XE, you will need to change the OwaUserid parameter in the text above to your own database’s connect identifier.

Once Apache has been restarted, mod_owa should now be running from http://localhost/somando. To test this, enter that address into your favourite web browser, and if mod_owa was installed you should see an error message like the one displayed in Figure 3j. If you see a different error message, you may not have installed mod_owa correctly.

The final thing we are going to do to make sure our Apache+PL/SQL setup is working correctly is create a sample application which performs a database SELECT and displays the output in a HTML table. Before we create the PL/SQL procedure to do this, let’s run the query from the SQL*Plus command line to see what data we should expect to appear in our sample app. To open SQL*Plus, go to Start -> Programs -> Oracle Database 10g Express Edition -> Run SQL Command Line. When the command line appears log on by typing CONNECT and pressing Enter. When prompted, enter your database username and password (Username: somando Password: somando1 if you followed our Oracle XE installation guide) and as soon as you are connected, enter the SQL statement from Listing 3b to query the database.

SELECT INITCAP(LOWER(object_type)) type, COUNT(*) count
FROM all_objects
GROUP BY object_type;

You should see a result similar to that illustrated in Figure 3j:

Figure 3j - Executed SQL Statement

Now we are going to create a PL/SQL procedure that will output this data to a HTML table that we can access using our web browser. From the SQL Command Line, enter the command ed test_page. Notepad will open and say that it cannot find the test_page.sql file, asking if you would like to create a new file. Click on the “Yes” button, and paste the text from Listing 3c into the Notepad window:

CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE test_page IS
    CURSOR get_data IS
        SELECT INITCAP(LOWER(object_type)) type, COUNT(*) count
        FROM all_objects
        GROUP BY object_type;
BEGIN
    htp.p('<table border="1">');
    htp.p('<tr><th>Type:</th><th>Count:</th></tr>');
    FOR i IN get_data LOOP
        htp.p('<tr><td>'||i.type||'</td><td>'||i.count||'</td></tr>');
    END LOOP;
    htp.p('</table>');
END test_page;
/

When you have pasted the above code into Notepad, click on File -> Save and then quit Notepad. Back in the SQL Command Line, you should have an SQL prompt. Here, enter the command @test_page to run the script we just created. If all goes according to plan, you should see a message “Procedure created”. We can now test this procedure from our web browser by navigating to http://localhost/somando/test_page which should display something like what you see in Figure 3k below:

Figure 3k - Our sample PL/SQL web application

That’s it! You are now ready to start developing PL/SQL web applications. In our next tutorial I will look at installing Oracle SQL Developer and how to set up a development environment for PL/SQL web application programming. Very shortly I will be writing tutorials on creating some neat web applications in PL/SQL.

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For the purpose of this tutorial, I will assume that you have followed my previous tutorial, which guides you through the process of installing Oracle Database 10g Express Edition (Oracle XE) on a Windows XP computer. The schemas, usernames and passwords I refer to will only work if you have set your system up as described in that lesson.

Figure 2a - Oracle Database Express Edition Login Screen

First, I am going to log into Oracle Application Express, which will allow me to manage the database via a neat web-based interface. From your Start Menu, go to Programs -> Oracle Database 10g Express Edition -> Go To Database Home Page. This will take you to a screen that should look similar to figure 2a above. On this screen enter the username somando and the password somando1. These login details will only work if you followed my previous tutorial and set up the user as described. If you used a different username and password when you created the user, be sure to use those credentials instead or you will not be able to access Application Express.

Figure 2b - Oracle Database Express Edition Main Menu

Once you have successfully logged in, you should see a screen similar to that in Figure 2b above. I am now going to create a database table. To do this, click on the arrow to the right of the Object Browser image icon. From the Create submenu, choose Table.

Figure 2c - Create Table Form

This screen will allow you to define a table, with fields for the table’s name, and for 8 columns. To add more than 10 columns, you can click the Add Column button. I am going to create a table called category with three columns, id, name, and parent_id. Don’t worry about the purpose of these fields for now, I’ll explain it in more detail at a later stage. Fill out the form exactly as you see in Figure 2c, and click the Next > button.

Figure 2d - Define Primary Key Form

Next you will need to set up the primary key for the table. I am going to set up the id field as our primary key, populated automatically from a sequence. To do this, select Populate from a new sequence from the list of options for Primary Key, and accept the default values for the Primary Key Constraint Name and Sequence Name fields. Now, select ID(NUMBER) from the drop-down list for the Primary Key field and press Next >.

Figure 2e - Define Foreign Keys Form

I am not going to set up any foreign keys at this time, so on the Foreign Keys screen (see Figure 2e), you can simply click the Next > button and move on. The next screen allows you to set up unique keys and check constraints. Again, I will not be using either of these right now, so you can simply press the Finish button.

Figure 2f - Confirm Create Table Screen

Finally, you will be asked to confirm your request to create the category table on the somando schema. If you press the SQL link, you will be shown the SQL statements that will be used to create the table. The code should be as follows:

CREATE table "CATEGORY" (
    "ID"         NUMBER(11,0) NOT NULL,
    "NAME"       VARCHAR2(255) NOT NULL,
    "PARENT_ID"  NUMBER(11,0) NOT NULL,
    constraint "CATEGORY_PK" primary key ("ID")
)
/

CREATE sequence "CATEGORY_SEQ"
/

CREATE trigger "BI_CATEGORY"
    before insert on "CATEGORY"
    for each row
begin
    select "CATEGORY_SEQ".nextval into :NEW.ID from dual;
end;
/

If all looks in order, go ahead and click the Create button, which will issue the above SQL code to the database, which will in turn create the table for you. If the create operation has completed successfully, you should see a screen similar to that displayed in Figure 2g below:

Figure 2g - Category Table Properties Display

Congratulations, you have created your first Oracle database table! That wasn’t so difficult now, was it? I will now take a break from using Application Express and use the SQL*Plus client that comes with Oracle Database 10g Express Edition to interact with the new table I have just created. To start SQL*Plus, go to Start -> Programs -> Oracle Database 10g Express Edition -> Run SQL Command Line. This will open up a DOS-style window with an SQL prompt ready and waiting for you, which should look like Figure 2h below:

Figure 2h - Run SQL Command Line

Now that we have started SQL*Plus, we can connect to our database schema. To do this, type CONNECT and hit enter. You will now be asked for a username followed by a password, which, if you followed my previous tutorial, will be somando and somando1, respectively. If you have supplied the correct login information, you will see a message informing you that you are connected. To make sure you are connected to the correct database, type DESC category and hit enter. If you have followed this tutorial correctly, you should see output similar to the following:

Figure 2i - Result of DESC category SQL statement

Our table isn’t much good to us if we’re not going to store any data in it, so now we will use SQL to insert a few rows into the table. Teaching you the SQL language is out of the scope of this tutorial, so if you are finding it difficult to grasp some of the statements we use, it might be a good idea to read the Oracle SQL tutorial available at http://www.db.cs.ucdavis.edu/teaching/sqltutorial/ which should bring you up to speed.

To follow the code examples in this tutorial in SQL*Plus, enter each line of code, line by line, pressing enter at the end of each line. The SQL interpreter will not process your code until you issue a semicolon or forward slash, telling it that you have finished typing your statement. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, the best way to learn is often to figure out how to correct your errors. So now, let’s get started, type up the following code listing in your SQL Command Line window:

INSERT INTO category(name, parent_id) VALUES('Oracle', 0);
INSERT INTO category(name, parent_id) VALUES('SQL Server', 0);

You will notice from this code that you are issuing two statements, each of which will create a new row in the category table. After you have entered each line, you should see the message 1 row created which indicates that your statement was executed successfully. This data will now persist for the remainder of your SQL session, but because of Oracle’s architecture, you will need to “commit” the changes in order for them to be stored permanently. This process is very simple, all you need to do is type COMMIT and press enter. A message Commit complete will tell you that the command worked.

You may have noticed that the INSERT statements we used to populate the table only featured two of the three fields in our category table. This is because we have a sequence and trigger (as set up earlier using Application Express) which automatically handle the creation of a unique number for the id field every time we perform an insert on the table.

Before we select the data back from the database, I am going to issue two commands which will help to format our data a little nicer. Do not concern yourself with these commands for now, as they are not of any particular importance. You may be wondering why I don’t issue a semi-colon or forward slash after these commands. The reason for this is that they are SQL*Plus commands rather than SQL statements. Again, don’t worry too much about the difference for now.

SET LINESIZE 300
SET HEAD OFF

Now that I’ve changed these settings, we are ready to select back our data from the database. I am going to issue two statements, one which returns the number of rows in the table, and a second which returns the ID and Name columns of all rows in the table.

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM category;
SELECT id, name FROM category;

The first command should result in the value 2 being output to the screen. The second statement will then display two rows, the first showing 1 Oracle and the second outputting 2 SQL Server, as can be seen in the following figure:

Figure 2j - Results of SELECT statements

Before we finish, I’m going to delete one of the rows we have created using a DELETE statement. This code also introduces the concept of the WHERE clause, which allows you to restrict the rows affected by an SQL statement by defining conditions which the data must meet in order for the specified action to be performed on that row.

DELETE FROM category
WHERE id = 2;
COMMIT;

In this lesson, I have covered the basics of creating a table using Application Express, and working with that table using the SQL*Plus command line tool. Both of these applications are very powerful and can be used to create full-blown databases and software. In future tutorials I will be looking at creating web applications using the Oracle PL/SQL language and HTML/CSS/JavaScript, and I’ll also be showing you how to use other useful tools such as Oracle’s SQL Developer.

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In order to install Oracle XE on your computer, you will need to download it from Oracle’s website. It is available for Microsoft Windows and x86 Linux distributions. For the purpose of this guide I will be showing you how to install Oracle XE on Microsoft Windows XP, but the procedure should be similar for other Windows operating systems.

Oracle has an extensive Installation Guide for its Oracle XE product. Windows users can view this guide at: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B25329_01/doc/install.102/b25143/toc.htm.

Linux users, check out Oracle’s Installation Guide at: http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/xe/files/install.102/b25144/toc.htm.

This guide will have many similarities to Oracle’s Installation Guide above, but if you follow any naming conventiones I use during installation it will make it much easier for you to follow any future Oracle guides I make available.

The first step in installing Oracle XE is to download the installation package from Oracle’s website. The direct URL to the Windows binary download page is http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/database/xe/htdocs/102xewinsoft.html. On this page, you must first accept the License Agreement by clicking on the radio button towards the top of the page. Once you have clicked on this, you can click on the relevant download links to download the installer. It is worth mentioning at this stage that you must be logged in to the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) to download Oracle XE. Registration to OTN is free and if you are not logged in you will be prompted to login or register before you will be allowed to proceed with the download.

Figure 1a - Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Download Page

The version I am using in my guides is the Oracle Database 10g Release 2 (10.2.0.1) Express Edition for Microsoft Windows (Western European). The download is highlighted in blue on Figure 1a above. It weighs in at a heavy 157mb, so it’s best to download this over a high-speed Internet connection if possible.

Once you have downloaded the installation package, run the OracleXE.exe file to start the installer.

Figure 1b - Oracle Database 10g Express Edition InstallShield Wizard

On this welcome screen (see Figure 1b), press Next (Alt+N) to continue to the next screen.

Figure 1c - Oracle Database 10g Express Edition License Agreement

On the License Agreement screen (Figure 1c), select “I accept the terms in the license agreement” (Alt+A) and then press the Next button (Alt+N) to move on.

Figure 1d - Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Destination Location

On the “Choose Destination Location” screen (Figure 1d) leave the default values as they are in Figure 1d and press Next (Alt+N) to continue.

Figure 1e - Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Database Passwords

On this screen (“Specify Database Passwords” – Figure 1e), you can enter a password that will be used for the SYS and SYSTEM database accounts. Throughout the course of this guide I will always use the password somando1 and I suggest you do the same to make it easier to follow my guides. Obviously these passwords should only be used on development machines, with much stronger and secure passwords being used on production servers. Once you have entered and confirmed the password, hit Next (Alt+N) to continue.

Figure 1f - Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Installation Summary

You will now be presented with a summary of the installation options (make a note of the port numbers, they should be as in Figure 1f). If all looks in order, click Install (Alt+I).

Figure 1g - Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Setup Status

The installation should now begin, and you may see a screen similar to Figure 1g. The installer will automatically copy the relevant files to your computer and will configure the database. This process may take a considerable amount of time depending on your computer’s specification. On my machine (an Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.00GHz with 2GB of RAM) the process took less than five minutes.

Figure 1h - Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Installation Complete

Once the installation has completed you will see a screen like in Figure 1h above. Leave the checkbox for “Launch the Database homepage” checked and click the Finish button. You have now successfully installed Oracle XE on your computer.

Figure 1i - Oracle Database Express Edition Login Screen

If you left the checkbox in Figure 1h checked, your default web browser will open and you will see a page similar to that shown in Figure 1i. Enter SYS in the field for Username and somando1 in the field for Password and click the Login button.

Figure 1j - Oracle Database Express Edition Homepage

If you were able to login successfully, you should see a page similar to that in Figure 1j, which is basically a web-based control panel called Application Express. This utility is in fact a powerful web application which provides you complete control over your database. At this point I highly recommend that you click on the “Getting Started” link at the top right hand section of this screen, which will bring you to a local version of Oracle’s Database Express Edition Getting Started Guide. This guide can also be accessed online at http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B25329_01/doc/admin.102/b25610/toc.htm.

The Getting Started Guide will walk you through the process of unlocking a sample user, logging in under the sample user’s account, and creating and running a simple application with Application Express. It will take you 20 minutes to get through, and will give you an idea of how simple it is to create powerful applications using Application Express.

Finally, I will create a user/schema that I will be using in my guides. All the tables that I create in future guides will be created in this schema. To create a user, open the Database Home Page (Start -> Programs -> Oracle Database 10g Express Edition -> Go To Database Home Page) and login with the username SYSTEM and password somando1. Click on the Administration image, then click on Database Users, and then the “Create >” button.

Figure 1k - Create Database User

On the Create Database User screen (as in Figure 1k above), enter the following details:

• Username: somando
• Password: somando1
• Confirm Password: somando1
• Expire Password: Leave this option unchecked
• Account Status: Unlocked
• Roles: Connect and Resource should be checked, DBA should be unchecked.
• Click on the Check All link at the bottom right of the User Privileges box to give this user all Direct Grant System Privileges.

Once you have filled out the form accordingly, click on the Create button at the top right hand corner of the Create Database User box. Once you click this button, the user/schema somando should be created. In order to verify that the user has been set up correctly, click on the Logout link at the right hand top corner of the page, and log back in, except this time log in with the username somando and the password somando1. If you can successfully log in, the user/schema has been created successfully.

That concludes this tutorial. In the next guide, I will be looking at creating tables and inserting data using Application Express. I will also be introducing the SQL Command Line (SQL*Plus) and some basic SQL statements.

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