Contents

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Preface

Related Oracle Documents

Oracle Services and Support

New Features in Oracle9i Application Server, Release 1.0.2.2

1 PL/SQL Gateway Overview

1.1 Processing Client Requests

1.2 PL/SQL Gateway Configurations

1.2.1 Stateless (Reset Package)

1.2.2 Stateless (Preserve Package)

1.2.3 Stateful

1.3 Database Access Descriptors

1.4 Invoking the PL/SQL Gateway

1.4.1 POST, GET and HEAD Methods

1.5 Transaction Mode

1.6 Parameter passing

1.6.1 Parameter Passing by Name (Overloaded parameters)

1.6.1.1 Overloading and PL/SQL Arrays

1.6.2 Flexible Parameter Passing

1.6.2.1 Two parameter interface

1.6.2.2 Four parameter interface

1.6.3 Large Parameter Passing

1.7 File Upload and Download

1.7.1 Document Table Definition

1.7.1.1 Semantics of the CONTENT column

1.7.1.2 Semantics of the CONTENT_TYPE column

1.7.1.3 Semantics of the LAST_UPDATED column

1.7.1.4 Semantics of the DAD_CHARSET column

1.7.2 Old Style Document Table Definition

1.7.3 Relevant Parameters

1.7.4 document_path (Document Access Path)

1.7.4.1 document_proc (Document Access Procedure):

1.7.4.2 upload_as_long_raw

1.7.5 File Upload

1.7.5.1 Document Parts Upload

1.7.6 Specifying Attributes (Mime Types) of Uploaded Files

1.7.7 Uploading Multiple Files

1.7.8 File Download

1.7.9 Direct BLOB Download

1.8 Path Aliasing (Direct Access URLs)

1.9 Common Gateway Interface (CGI) Environment Variables

1.9.1 Adding and Overiding CGI Environment Variables

1.9.2 NLS_LANG

1.9.2.1 REQUEST_CHARSET CGI environment variable

1.9.2.2 REQUEST_IANA_CHARSET CGI environment variable

2 Securing applications through the PL/SQL Gateway

2.1 Authenticating Users

2.1.1 Basic (Database Controlled Authentication)

2.1.1.1 Deauthentication

2.1.2 Global OWA, Custom OWA, and Per Package (Custom Authentication)

2.1.3 REMOTE_USER CGI Environment Variable

2.2 Protecting the PL/SQL Procedures Granted to PUBLIC

2.3 Protecting the Administration pages

2.3.1 Protecting the Admin pages through Basic Authentication

2.3.2 Protecting the Admin pages through the Oracle Portal (Single Sign-On)

3 Caching

3.1 The PL/SQL Gateway Cache

3.2 Validation Technique

3.2.1 Last-Modified

3.2.2 Entity Tag Method

3.2.3 Using the Validation Technique for PL/SQL Gateway

3.2.4 Second Request using the Validation Technique

3.3 Using the Expires Technique

3.3.1 Second Request using the Expires Technique

3.4 System- and User-level Caching

3.4.1 PL/SQL Web Toolkit functions (owa_cache package)

4 Configuring the PL/SQL Gateway

4.1 Accessing the Gateway Configuration Menu

4.1.1 Accessing the Gateway Configuration Menu from Oracle Portal

4.2 Accessing the Global Settings

4.2.1 Global Settings Accessible through the Configuration File

4.3 Accessing Database Access Descriptor settings

4.3.1 DAD Settings Accessible through the Configuration File

4.4 Accessing the Cache settings

4.4.1 PL/SQL Caching

4.4.2 Session Cookie Caching (Portal only)

5 Installing the PL/SQL Gateway

5.1 System Requirements

5.2 Before you begin

5.3 Installation

5.4 Installing Required Packages

5.4.1 Upgrading from Oracle9i Application Server or WebDB Listener

5.4.2 Upgrading from OAS Installations to Oracle9i Application Server

5.5 Configuring the Oracle HTTP Server Listener

5.5.1 apachectl file

5.5.2 httpd.conf file

5.5.3 plsql.conf file

5.5.4 wdbsvr.app file

5.5.5 Performance Tuning Oracle HTTP Server

5.5.5.1 mod_expires

5.5.5.2 KeepAlive Directives

5.5.6 Customizing Error Pages Through the Oracle HTTP Server

5.6 Accessing the PL/SQL Gateway Configuration page

5.6.1 plsql.conf configuration file

5.7 Starting and stopping the Oracle HTTP Server Listener

5.7.1 UNIX

5.7.2 Windows NT

6 PL/SQL Gateway Tutorial

6.1 Creating and Loading the Stored Procedure into the Database

6.2 Creating an HTML Page to Invoke the Application

A Performance Tuning

B Troubleshooting

B.1 OAS Compatibility

B.1.1 Using the mod_plsql without the /pls in the URL

B.1.2 Using Flexible Parameters and the Exclamation Mark

B.2 Logging

B.3 Controlling Database Processes for Each mod_plsql Request

B.4 Connection Pooling in mod_plsql

B.4.1 Install a Separate Apache Listener for mod_plsql Requests

B.5 Debugging

B.5.1 Error Code 503 (Service Temporarily Unavailable)

B.6 Symbols Displaying Incorrectly with Netscape 6

B.7 Overhead Problems

B.7.1 The Describe Overhead

B.7.2 Avoiding the Describe Overhead

B.7.3 The Flexible Parameter Passing (four parameter) Overhead

B.7.4 Avoiding the Flexible Parameter Passing Overhead

B.8 Setting up PL/SQL to Work with WebDB

Index