README.Oracle

Installation Notes
------------------

On RT 3.8.2 and later, RT deployment for Oracle databases is very
straightforward.

You don't need to configure Oracle beforehand. During installation
a user is created and all RT's objects are created in his schema.
The user is created with the following parameters:

    CREATE USER <DatabaseUser> IDENTIFIED BY <DatabasePassword>
        DEFAULT TABLESPACE USERS TEMPORARY TABLESPACE TEMP
        QUOTA UNLIMITED ON USERS

And the user is also granted 'CONNECT' and 'RESOURCE'. It's up to you
to do decide how to manage users, change quotas, table spaces, etc.

RT has an option $DatabaseName which is used to define the SID of
the Oracle database. You don't have to set up the TWO_TASK environment
variable or any helper files for establishing connections.

Example:

    ./configure \
        --with-db-type=Oracle \
        --with-db-database=XE \
        --with-db-host=192.168.0.1 \
        --with-db-dba=system \
        --with-db-rt-user=rtdb1 \
        --with-db-rt-pass=rtdb1secret \
        ... other configure options ...

That should be enough to get you started on Oracle, but to complete
installation you must follow the general instructions in the README file.

Client Drivers
--------------

When installing Oracle client drivers, run the same version as
the database you are connecting to. If you are running RT on the same
server as the Oracle database, this should happen automatically as the
client drivers will be installed with the Oracle database software. If
the Oracle database runs in a separate server and you are installing
client libraries from the Oracle Instance Client, find and install
the version that corresponds with the database you are connecting to.

You will also need to install the DBD::Oracle perl module to allow
RT to connect to the Oracle database. Some recent versions of DBD::Oracle
have had problems with RT and should be avoided.

DBD::Oracle version 1.74 is known to work well with RT. The next
known version to work well is version 1.90. Versions in between
those had an issue on disconnect that would cause a segfault.

Updating Statistics
-------------------

As with all databases it is important to analyze the schema and get
current statistics after every significant dataset change.  Oracle's
cost-based optimizer can provide particularly bad performance when the
schema statistics are inaccurate.  To analyze the schema of the user
called RT, execute the following from within sqlplus:

  execute dbms_utility.analyze_schema( 'RT', 'estimate');