README

                           ===========================
                           Easysoft Oracle ODBC Driver
                           ===========================

For installation and configuratoion instructions please refer to the INSTALL 
file.

Prerequisites
*************

The prerequisites for building the Oracle ODBC Driver as as follows.

 o Oracle Call Interface header files.
   The OCI headers are usually located in $ORACLE_HOME/rdmbs/demo of the 
   server.
   You may also require the header files from $ORACLE_HOME/network/public
   and $ORACLE_HOME/plsql/public

 o libclntsh, the main Oracle client library, or its constituents.
   libclntsh is normally located in $ORACLE_HOME/lib; if libclntsh.so is not 
   present you may well be able to build it using the genclntsh shell script.
   It is also possible to link the driver with the constituent parts of 
   libclntsh, although this will require a manual link at this time.
   Please note that libclntsh.so on some versions of Oracle has an undefined
   symbol in it (slpmprodstab). Exporting this symbol from the Oracle ODBC
   library seems to remedy this (but is not a safe solution). The configure
   option "--enable-symbol-hack=yes" sets the workaround.
   Oracle version 8.1.5 does not have this problem.

 o A driver manager. unixODBC is recommended (see http://www.unixODBC.org).

 o A POSIX threads library (libpthread) is required for thread safety.

The necessary Oracle files for most platforms are available for free download 
either as part of their respective server distributions or as part of client 
distributions from the Oracle Technology Network at http://technet.oracle.com

Some of these downloads can be very large however (hundreds of megabytes). For
Linux glibc2 users, libclntsh.so is available as part of the "Oracle Libs" 
package available from www.orasoft.org. 
It also appears that the necessary header files are the same across platforms,
so even if your server is on a different OS you may still be able to use the 
headers.

Obtaining the Source
********************
INSTRUCTIONS FOR OBTAINING THE FERMILAB CONTINUATION/FORK/WHATEVER

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cdcvs.fnal.gov:/cvs/cd_read_only login

When prompted for a password, type 

anoncvs

To check out the source code, type 

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cdcvs.fnal.gov:/cvs/cd_read_only checkout oracle_odbc_driver

ORIGINAL INSTRUCTIONS FROM EASYSOFT: (Still works as of Aug 16 2002)

You can obtain the latest snapshot version of the ODBC driver code either from 
the easysoft.org web site at www.easysoft.org/projects/oracle/download.phtml, 
or if you wish to keep up with the "bleeding edge" you can obtain code directly
from the CVS repository at cvs.easysoft.org as follows.

Login to the Easysoft CVS repository. Use anoncvs as the password. 
$ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.easysoft.org:/easysoft.org/cvsroot login

Obtain the Oracle ODBC Driver CVS tree: 
$ cvs -d :pserver:anoncvs@cvs.easysoft.org:/easysoft.org/cvsroot co oracle

After the CVS tree has been downloaded run the following command: 
$ make -f Makefile.cvs

You can then do ./configure ; make etc. as normal.

NOTE
****

Please be aware that this code is under constant development, hence the latest
code from CVS and possibly the latest snapshot release may not function
correctly and may not even compile correctly on your platform.

If you wish to keep up with the development effort there is a mailing list at 
easysoft.com. To subscribe, send a message to majordomo@easysoft.com with the 
words "subscribe oracle" in the body of the mail. We have also set up a 
newsgroup for more detailed discussion of the development effort, this can be
accessed on our news server as news://news.easysoft.com/easysoft.beta.oracle

Small bugfixes can be mailed (preferably as unified diffs) to 
tom.fosdick@easysoft.com

MAILING LIST
************

To keep up to date with the development of the Oracle ODBC driver, send a mail
containing the text "subscribe oracle" to majordomo@easysoft.com
There is also a newsgroup at news://news.easysoft.com/easysoft.beta.oracle 
for more detailed deiscussion of the development effort
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$Id: README,v 1.2 2002/08/16 17:25:39 dbox Exp $