A version 2.5.1 is now available !

This release is a patch for the 2.5.0 that came out few days agos with some broken functionnalities.

This updates contains 5 fixes, most of them related to dynamic runtime loading of OCI shared library.

Here is the list :

• Fixed runtime loading of some OCI symbols (broken since v2.5.0)
• Fixed runtime loading of OCI shared library on Unix-like platforms(broken since v2.5.0)
• Fixed connection pooling emulation for Oracle 8i
• Fixed Unicode strings binding to PL/SQL tables of char/varchar
• Fixed Unicode internal buffer expansion for Unix-like platforms (where wchar_t is 4 bytes) that could mess up the data for string  arrays binds

OCILIB releases are always internally tested :

• with Oracle 8i, 9i (R1&R2), 10gR2, 11gR1
• on MS Windows Vista, Linux OpenSuse 10
• All Configurations : ansi, mixed, unicode with dynamic linkage to OCI at compile time and dynamic loading at runtime (explicit dynamic loading of OCI library)

OCILIB is also tested by users before a release goes out.

For v2.5.0, tests were done on the wrong packages and few bugs had not been detected.

Sorry for the inconvience !

v2.5.1 corrects now all bugs introduced by v2.5.0 and passed all tests.

Have a nice day !

I’ve found that in the OCILIB 2.5.0 releases build with the option OCI_IMPORT_LINKAGE (runtime loading of oracle shared lib, default option for the prebuilt Windows OCILIB Dlls), some symbols where not loaded anymore !

It affects multithreaded applications. The OCI functions related to mutexes were not loaded (the magic of cut’n paste…)

The following code disappeared between 2.4.0 and 2.5.0 in ocilib.c, OCI_Initialize():

    LIB_SYMBOL(OCILib.lib_handle, "OCIThreadMutexInit", OCIThreadMutexInit,
               OCITHREADMUTEXINIT);
    LIB_SYMBOL(OCILib.lib_handle, "OCIThreadMutexDestroy", OCIThreadMutexDestroy,
               OCITHREADMUTEXDESTROY);
    LIB_SYMBOL(OCILib.lib_handle, "OCIThreadMutexAcquire", OCIThreadMutexAcquire,
               OCITHREADMUTEXACQUIRE);
    LIB_SYMBOL(OCILib.lib_handle, "OCIThreadMutexRelease", OCIThreadMutexRelease,
               OCITHREADMUTEXRELEASE);

So, i’ll make a 2.5.1 release later today !

A new OCILIB release is available !

Content :

• Added support for PL/SQL tables (PL/SQL arrays)  when binding C (native and OCILIB types arrays) to PL/SQL block
• Extended Date, timestamp and interval support : few more functions, added conversion to ISO C time datatypes and now these types can be created independtly from database connections
• Extended OCI_Connection handle attributes : alive status and association of program user data
• Added Support for retreiving server output : calls to dbms_output.put() and dbms_output.put_line() from inside PL/SQL blocks, triggers, procedures, packages, .. can be now retreived by OCILIB
• Added Support for OCI Threadkeys : you can now have a process wide name identifier (key) that can have hold thread specific values (a bit like a getenv() and putenv() but values are stored by thread)
• Extended runtime loading of Oracle shared libs on various Unix-like systems : some exotic sharted lib names (dylib, sh, …) are now handled by the configure script and also managed for runtime time loading of Oracle shared libs
• Added Support for Oracle Instant Client on Unix-like systems : 2 options have been added to the configure script in order to handle Instant Client packages correctly (differents packages for headers and libs + paths are different from regular clients)
• Extended OCILIB documentation : added an installation page for all platforms and all examples have been checked out and extended to full C program source code
• Added more demo source code : now, about 25 example source code ready to compile are provided
• Miscelleanous modifications (see changelog)

Download OCILIB v2.5.0

Full 2.5.0 ChangeLog

Validated platforms :

• Windows
• Linux
• HP/UX
• Solaris
• AIX
• Mac OS X
• OpenVMS

Supported Oracle versions : 8i, 9i, 10g, 11g

Today, I was asked on the OCILIB SourceForge forum if OCILIB could handle calls to stored procedures…

Of course, it can ! Here is a basic simple example.

Let’s say you’ve got the following stored procedure :

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my_function(code IN NUMBER, str OUT VARCHAR) RETURN NUMBER;

Here is a full working C program source code to call this procedure:

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int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    int code, res;
    char str[31];
    OCI_Connection *cn;
    OCI_Statement *st;
 
    OCI_Initialize(NULL, NULL, OCI_ENV_DEFAULT);
 
    cn = OCI_ConnectionCreate("db", "user", "pwd", OCI_SESSION_DEFAULT);
    st = OCI_StatementCreate(cn);
 
    OCI_Prepare(st, "begin :res := my_function(:code, :str); end;");
    OCI_BindInt(st, ":res", &res);
    OCI_BindInt(st, ":code", &code);
    OCI_BindString(st, ":str", str, 30);
 
    code = 5;
    res = 0;
    str[0] = 0;
 
    OCI_Execute(st);
 
    printf("res = %d, str = %s", res, str);
 
    OCI_Cleanup();
 
    return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

That’s all ! Calling stored procedures is really easy with OCILIB

The OCILIB library (C wrapper for Oracle OCI) has now its own blog !

OCILIB is a free, open source and platform independant library, written in C, that access Oracle Databases.

The OCILIB library :

• Encapsulates OCI (Oracle Call Interface which is powerful but complex)
• Hides OCI complexity
• Proposes instead a simple, readable and reusable API
• Offers up to 350 simple and straightforward APIs.

OCILIB is developed by Vincent Rogier. Get the latest package, install and enjoy it !

A new release  v2.5.0 is planned for July 22th, 2008 !