• Windows 7 SP1 Host
• VirtualBox 4.1.2
• Ubuntu 10 x86 Guest
• Ubuntu 11 x64 Guest

I hit two things during this install: that a shared folder couldn’t be read by the Ubuntu user; and the VM crashed when I shut it down after adding the Guest Addons. I worked out both issues, and for the benefit of all am going to write them down in my blog.

Shared Folder Cannot be Read

After following all the docs I could find about setting up a shared folder, I realised it was doing what it was supposed to but there was a permissions problem. When I tried to view the /media/sf_sharedDiskName directory (which is where Virtual Box mounts the shared folder from the host) I got an error saying I didn’t have permission to read that folder. I needed to add the vboxsf group to my user’s groups, and reboot and that did the trick. Here’s the procedure to add a shared drive:

1. Add the shared drive using the VirtualBox UI (either with VM started or stopped).
2. Start up the VM if it isn’t running and add the vboxsf group to your user. Do this using the System > Administration > Users and Groups dialog. Click Manage Groups and look for the vboxsf group. Select it and click Properties and add your user to this group.
3. Restart the VM.

Voila it works! So easy when you know how!

VM Crashed When Shutdown/Restarted

The other issue I had was the VM crashing when I shut it down or turned it off. The crash happened almost immediately on issuing the shutdown/restart command. I worked out that I had 3D Acceleration checked in the VM Settings and this was the culprit. You won’t see this crash until you install the Guest Addons, then the crashes will begin on shutdown. So, to fix this, turn off 3D acceleration.

• A new, intuitive interface (that means, we don’t have to relearn what we already know, or learn what we don’t. Harder that you’d imagine, but not impossible.
• A stable operating system. It must not crash (too) often. A crash now and then is really inevitable. Or is it?
• Free software, or at the very least, affordable to everyone. And I mean very cheap, not US$800 for a a single piece of software. I’m thinking more like $10, which is still outrageous to many people!
• Office productivity tools that are at least as easy-to-use and useful as Microsoft Office products.
• Games and audio software that runs even better on these new platforms.
• Cheap hardware. Well, we really do have this now. The machines we’re using now are more sophisticated and faster than anything I could have imagined when I started in this IT game. Yes, it was a bloody long time ago!

These are just a few of requirements that I’ve been pondering of late. If I gave it more than a few minutes thought, I could come up with a very long, and detailed list, but I’ll leave it at the main ones for now.

So, why has Microsoft kept such a choke-hold on the desktops of the enterprise and the home? We all know this, so I won’t bore you with the bundling strategies they got the hardware vendors to sign up to, and I won’t bore you with the law suits that stifled creativity, and the big boys throwing sand in the eyes of the little school starters in the playground. It’s so Web 1.0.

Web 1.0. I know that doesn’t even exist, but then nor does Web 2.0. It’s just a marketing slogan, like the Information Superhighway (I hated that with a passion). Web 2.0 is just a bunch of clever widgets created with Dynamic HTML (DHMTL), which is essentially Javascript controlling Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Write a few of these widgets, reuse them in other applications, and you’ve got this fancy-pants new user interface that wasn’t able to be done before the current-day web browsers. We’ve all been waiting for this forever, and now all the ducks are in a row, and we can start shooting them down with our widget guns.

Back to my point.

Now our web-based interfaces are becoming more useable, we’ve started on our way to the end of Microsoft as the platform of choice.

Open source really is the future of software. Sure, the business model still needs some working on, but the idea of free software, and users paying for support really rocks my world. It blows my hair back better than my turbo-powered hair dryer.

The Linux operating system, in all its many fine flavours, is really starting to make me a happy lass. The interfaces are improving. The development and support models are improving, with some big players getting involved and offering real enterprise-level offerings. If the user interface improves to the point that any old Microsoft user can make it do what they want, without too much frustration, I think we have a winner.

As for office productivity, Open Office goes a long way to this. Really, it does. I rarely use MSOffice anymore, and rely solely on OO. If you haven’t tried it before, or haven’t even heard of it, go download it now and give it a go. Did I mention it’s free? Oh goodness, free? Really? How do they do it?

So what’s the point to this ramble? I’m looking forward to the next 5-6 years in the open source development world. I think things will really change. If a group of developers get together and really, really think about the interface, then we will all win. Steve Jobs showed us what a great interface is oh so many years ago, but I think even Apple have lost the path lately. I love love love Apple, but I still think their UI could be better. I think everybody’s UI should be better.

I think it’s time I took a job in interface design. I could save the world.

I also love the drag and click model of the UI widgets. Why has myspace been so slow in adopting this, when Facebook does it so easily?

I think there are some very childish and useless widgets on Facebook though. That bloody Zombie widget that’s taking over at the moment, and the number of different Wall widgets seems a bit silly. Perhaps the Facebook team could spend a bit more time vetting what’s made available. Perhaps even commission the good ones, and dump the dodgy ones. I also like the model of making a few dollars by writing a decent widget that costs pennies to the user, but can reap huge rewards for the developer. I’m considering writing one myself to practice my Web2.0 and PHP skills. I’m about to go read the developer doc and see how it all works. Might be a fun little project. Perhaps a customizable style sheet? Argh!

So far I’ve managed to intergrate my flickr site with Facebook, and I’m about to figure out how I can link in my blogs other than just using links. If you know, please feel free to post a comment and let me know. Any other Facebook hints would be handy too.

So yesterday I logged in on my trusty Mac, and switched from the Yahoo Beta to the standard Yahoo. I’m back in business everywhere now. What a shame. I hate the old style, but it’s the only version that works.

I’ll just have to use Gmail as my main free email now, and relegate Yahoo to the spam email system.

Installing PEAR into a PHP/Apache install

Download the go-pear.php script from http://go-pear.org/.

Open a command line shell and run the script:

php go-pear.php

Welcome to go-pear!

Go-pear will install the 'pear' command and all the files needed by

it. This command is your tool for PEAR installation and maintenance.

Go-pear also lets you download and install the PEAR packages bundled

with PHP: MDB2.

If you wish to abort, press Control-C now, or press Enter to continue:

HTTP proxy (http://user:password@proxy.myhost.com:port), or Enter for none:: http://my-proxy-server.com:80

Below is a suggested file layout for your new PEAR installation.  To

change individual locations, type the number in front of the

directory.  Type 'all' to change all of them or simply press Enter to

accept these locations.

 1. Installation prefix           : /usr

 2. Binaries directory            : $prefix/bin

 3. PHP code directory ($php_dir) : $prefix/share/pear

 4. Documentation base directory  : $php_dir/docs

 5. Data base directory           : $php_dir/data

 6. Tests base directory          : $php_dir/tests

 7. Temporary files directory     : $prefix/temp

1-7, 'all' or Enter to continue:

The following PEAR packages are bundled with PHP: MDB2.

Would you like to install these as well? [Y/n] : Y

Loading zlib: ok

Downloading package: PEAR-stable......ok

Downloading package: Archive_Tar-stable....ok

Downloading package: Console_Getopt-stable....ok

Downloading package: Structures_Graph-stable....ok

Bootstrapping: PEAR...................(remote) ok

Bootstrapping: Archive_Tar............(remote) ok

Bootstrapping: Console_Getopt.........(remote) ok

Downloading package: MDB2.............ok

Extracting installer..................ok

warning: pear/PEAR requires package "pear/Archive_Tar" (version >= 1.3.1)

warning: pear/PEAR requires package "pear/Console_Getopt" (version >= 1.2)

warning: pear/PEAR requires package "pear/Structures_Graph" (version >= 1.0.2)

pear/PEAR can optionally use package "pear/XML_RPC" (version >= 1.4.0)

pear/PEAR can optionally use package "pear/PEAR_Frontend_Web" (version >= 0.5.0)pear/PEAR can optionally use package "pear/PEAR_Frontend_Gtk" (version >= 0.4.0)install ok: channel://pear.php.net/PEAR-1.5.4

install ok: channel://pear.php.net/Archive_Tar-1.3.2

install ok: channel://pear.php.net/Console_Getopt-1.2.2

install ok: channel://pear.php.net/Structures_Graph-1.0.2

install ok: channel://pear.php.net/MDB2-2.4.1

MDB2: Optional feature fbsql available (Frontbase SQL driver for MDB2)

MDB2: Optional feature ibase available (Interbase/Firebird driver for MDB2)

MDB2: Optional feature mysql available (MySQL driver for MDB2)

MDB2: Optional feature mysqli available (MySQLi driver for MDB2)

MDB2: Optional feature mssql available (MS SQL Server driver for MDB2)

MDB2: Optional feature oci8 available (Oracle driver for MDB2)

MDB2: Optional feature pgsql available (PostgreSQL driver for MDB2)

MDB2: Optional feature querysim available (Querysim driver for MDB2)

MDB2: Optional feature sqlite available (SQLite2 driver for MDB2)

To install use "pear install pear/MDB2#featurename"

The 'pear' command is now at your service at /usr/bin/pear

You can now use PEAR to install PHP extensions. See http://www.go-pear.org/.

Ah, I feel so much better being free of the shackles of a home phone.

http://blogs.oracle.com/alison

This blog will only remain here for another few weeks before I hit delete. Please change any bookmarks to the new blog.

Alison

It’s easy to get confused as to how to specificy your Oracle database connection string, and there’s a handy new feature in Oracle 10g that makes this a whole lot easier. So here’s a little rundown of the three ways to connect to Oracle databases. You can use the:

• tnsnames.ora file
• Full connection string
• Easy connect string

These examples show how to specificy an Oracle connection string using the new OCI8 functions in PHP.

tnsnames.ora File

The tnsnames.ora file is a client side file that maps an alias used by client
programs to a database service. It is used to connect to a non-default database. Here you have to have an entry in the tnsnames.ora file, and reference the alias to that entry in your connection code.

PHP code:

oci_connect($un, $pw, 'MYDB');

tnsnames.ora entry

MYDB = (DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)
(HOST = mymachine.mydomain)(PORT = 1521))
(CONNECT_DATA =
(SERVER = DEDICATED)
(SERVICE_NAME = MYDB.AU.ORACLE.COM)) )

Full Connection String

The full connection string does not require the use of a tnsnames.ora file.
You need to enter the full connection string when you connect to the database in your code.

PHP code:

oci_connect($un, $pw,
'(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=mymachine.mydomain)(PORT=1521))
(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVER=DEDICATED)
(SERVICE_NAME = MYDB)))');

Easy Connect String

This is one Oracle 10g feature that I use daily. As I constantly connect to so many different databases in my day, this has saved me so much time as I don’t have to configure anything, just know the machine name and the database alias and I’m off.

The easy connect string does not require the use of a tnsnames.ora file, and is an abbreviated version of the full connection string. you must have the Oracle 10g client-side libraries to use the easy connect string.

PHP code:

oci_connect($un, $pw, '//mymachine.mydomain:port/MYDB');

Alison Holloway, Product Manager, Oracle Corporation

January 2006

Introduction

In November 2005 I attended the PHP Conference in Frankfurt. At that conference
I did a demonstration which showed how to integrate PHP Web Services using Oracle
BPEL, and the Oracle JDeveloper PHP Extension. I have written up that demo for
others to get an overview of what I talked about and showed to the conference
attendees.

If you have PHP web services you want to integrate into a new web service,
or business process, then BPEL is your answer. BPEL lets you orchestrate your
disparate web services into new web services. You can even use the BPEL web
services as part of another BEPL web service. The beauty of web services is
that they can be in a variety of languages, so you can reuse your PHP web services
and ones in other languages.

This article gives an overview of the tools you could use to create BPEL processes:

• Oracle JDeveloper 10g PHP Extension – an extension to Oracle JDeveloper
  10g to create and edit PHP scripts, with syntax highlighting and
  sample code to create connections to an Oracle database.
• Oracle BPEL Designer – an extension to Oracle JDeveloper 10g to
  graphically create and orchestrate BPEL processes.
• Oracle BPEL Console – a web service to start, stop, monitor and debug BPEL
  processes.
• Oracle BPEL Worklist – a web service to interract with BPEL processes that
  require user intervention.

These tools help you to quickly get started creating BPEL processes to incorporate
your PHP web services into new business processes.

Let’s suppose you have a departmental application to approve employee leave
requests. A PHP developer has written this application as a web service and
managers log into the application to manage the leave requests. The employee
leave request table contains a row with the identifier of 1004, which is a leave
request for an employee, CJONES. You can see this leave request in the PHP web
service used by department managers to approve employee leave requests.

Figure 1, PHP Web Service Consumer Interface

This is a standalone application that you now want to incorporate into a new
company-wide business process as a web service. You can use BPEL to do this.
Let’s now run through the Oracle BPEL and PHP tools.

Oracle JDeveloper 10g PHP Extension

This PHP web service was written using the Oracle JDeveloper 10g PHP
Extension. This extension was written by Oracle and gives you, amongst other
things, PHP code syntax highlighting, and some snippets of code that help you
get started creating connections to an Oracle Database. Here’s a look at the
PHP Extension in action.

Figure 2, Oracle JDeveloper 10g PHP Extension

The code snippets shown in the Component Palette are included in the PHP Extension
and enable to to quickly create database connections and run SQL statements.
The Structure pane includes a list of PHP functions and their respective variables.

Although the PHP Extension doesn’t give you PHP debugging, it may be useful
if you want to write or edit PHP files while creating a BPEL application.

To create a BPEL process which will incorporate this PHP web service, you would
use the Oracle BPEL Designer.

Oracle BPEL Designer

The Oracle BPEL Designer is another extension to Oracle JDeveloper 10g.
I would suggest installing the Oracle BPEL Designer (Oracle JDeveloper 10g
and the BPEL Designer Extension) first, and then add the PHP Extension. There
is also an Oracle BPEL Designer extension available for Eclipse, although this
doesn’t include the Oracle-specific features.

Here’s a look at the BPEL Designer interface.

Figure 3, Oracle BPEL Designer Interface

The BPEL Designer gives you a graphical tool to create and orchestrate BPEL
processes. For example, you can click and drag in PartnerLinks (links to WSDL
files for web services), User Tasks (interraction by a user), add decision making
elements such as While loops, Waits, Switches, and throw errors.

The BPEL process shown here includes a Partner Link to a database adapter,
called DBRead in Figure 3. This enables you to make direct calls to an Oracle
Database to query and update data. This BPEL process queries the database using
the leave request ID and returns the row associated with that ID. The BPEL process
then manipulates the results using XSLT and XQuery functions to format the query
results, and create new variables required by the process.

There is also some decision making in the process. In this case, there is a
switch statement which enables different actions to be performed depending on
whether the leave request is approved, denied, or an error is generated.

If the employee leave request is approved, the BPEL process will use the PHP
web service, called PHPUpdateDB in Figure 3, to delete the row from the departmental
table. The BPEL process can then update the main human resources database with
the employee leave request information using another web service, or a direct
database update using a database adapter.

When the BPEL process is ready to deploy, the BPEL Designer will generate all
the required deployment information and deploy it to the BPEL Process Manager
Server.

BPEL Process Manager

The BPEL Process Manager is a J2EE application which allows you to start, stop,
monitor, debug, and kill BPEL processes. You can monitor the state of all the
BPEL processes and drill down to individual SOAP messages. This is useful for
debugging processes while you’re developing them, as well as monitoring them
when they have been deployed.

The BPEL Process Manager can be deployed to a standalone OC4J instance (which
is the default deployment option and included in the BPEL Process Manager),
or to another J2EE compliant server.

When the BPEL process is deployed, use the BPEL Work Console to start and stop,
monitor, and debug BPEL processes.

BPEL Work Console

The BPEL Work Console is used to start, monitor and debug BPEL processes. The
BPEL Work Console is a web service and sends a SOAP message to the BPEL process.
Using the LeaveRequestID of 1004 and sending the process an XML message will
start the process.

Figure 4, Starting a BPEL process using the Oracle BPEL Console Interface

The BPEL process verifies that the LeaveRequestID exists by using a Database
PartnerLink (web service) to select a row from the table and retrieve the contents
of that row. This is a direct database query and does not use the PHP web service.

When the BPEL process is started, the BPEL Console displays a screen with options
to visually track the flow, audit it using XML, or to debug it.

Figure 5, BPEL process monitoring options using the Oracle BPEL Console
Interface

The Visual Flow is a very easy way to see what state the process is in, what
variables have been passed, what decisions have been made, and what errors may
have been generated. In this case, the BPEL process has halted and is waiting
for manual intervention at the receiveUpdate… User Task.

Figure 6, BPEL process waiting for user input using the Oracle BPEL Console
Interface

You could write an application yourself which would allow you to interract
with the BPEL process (web service), or you can use the Oracle BPEL Worklist.
The BPEL Worklist is a supplied web service which enables you to interract with
BPEL processes that require user intervention.

The BPEL Worklist shows a list of the User Tasks assigned to a manager. In
this case, it is the approval of the employee leave request.

Figure 7, Acquiring a task using the BPEL Worklist Interface

The task must be acquired by the manager before any action or decision can
be made on it. Once the task is acquired, the manager can approve, reject or
escalate the task to a supervisor.

The escalation heirarchy is managed by JAZN (Oracle’s implementation of Java
Authentication and Authorization Service (JAAS)) and can be either set up using
the JAZN interface, or connected to an LDAP or SSO Server.

Figure 8, Approving a task using the BPEL Worklist Interface

When the task is approved, the BEPL process receives a message from the Worklist
web service and continues processing. The BPEL process continues through its
decision making and processing, assigning variables to whatever is required
using simple transformations, or XSLT.

Figure 9, BPEL process execution completed using the Oracle BPEL Console
Interface

You can click on any of the events in the process to see the SOAP messages
being generated For example, the result of invoking the GetLeaveDetails Partner
Link generates the following SOAP message.

Figure 10, DBRead Database Adapter SOAP messages displayed using the Oracle
BPEL Console Interface

The SOAP message displays the input and output variables of the message. You
can see that the input variable is lrequest=1004, and the output variables are
employeeId=CJONES, id=1004, leaveTypeId=7 and noOfDays=4. This message represents
a request to the database Partner Link to retrieve the row with the leave request
identifier of 1004.

Now that the BPEL process has finished, and the database updated to remove
the leave request with an ID of 1004, logging into the PHP web service shows
that the database has been updated. The leave request with an ID of 1004 is
no longer displayed.

Figure 10, PHP Web Service Interface showing ID 1004 removed from the database

This is a very simple BPEL process and PHP web service, but it shows that you
can use BPEL to integrate existing PHP web services with other web services
to create new business processes.

Further Information

For further information on BPEL and using PHP with Oracle, go to the following
URLs.

Oracle BPEL Process Manager

http://otn.oracle.com/bpel

Service-Oriented Architecture Technology Center

http://otn.oracle.com/webservices

PHP Developer Center

http://otn.oracle.com/php

Zend Core for Oracle

http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/php/zendcore

Oracle JDeveloper 10g PHP Extension

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/htdocs/partners/addins/exchange/php