Connect to Oracle Database

This topic describes how to connect to Oracle Database from Domino. You must have network connectivity between Oracle and your Domino deployment.

The easiest way to connect to Oracle from Domino is to create a Domino Data Source as described below.

Create an Oracle Data Source

From the navigation pane, click Data > Data Sources.
Click Create a Data Source.
In the New Data Source window, from Select Data Store, select Oracle.
Enter the Host, Port, and name of the Database.
Enter the Data Source Name.
Optional: Enter a Description to explain the purpose of the Data Source to others.
Click Next.
Enter the Username and Password to connect to Oracle. The Domino secret store backed by HashiCorp Vault securely stores the credentials.
Click Test Credentials.
If the Data Source authenticates, click Next.
Select who can view and use the Data Source in projects.
Click Finish Setup.

Alternate way to connect to Oracle

Warning

This section describes an alternate method to connect to Oracle. Domino does not officially support this method.

Before you can connect to Oracle, you must install the following client software your environment:
- The basic package: instantclient-basic-linux.x64-<oracle-version>dbru.zip
- The SDK package: instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-<oracle-version>dbru.zip
  
  You must download these files from the Instant Client Downloads page.
  1. Use your Oracle customer login.
  2. Host an internal mirror of the files somewhere accessible to your Domino hosts.
  3. Install the software manually. In the example environments in this topic, these files are retrieved from a private S3 bucket with Wget. You must make them available in a similar manner for your Domino deployment.

Python and cs_Oracle

To interact with Oracle databases from Python, Domino recommends the cx_Oracle library.

Use the following Dockerfile instruction to install the Oracle client drivers and cx_Oracle in your environment.

Note	You cannot copy and paste this Dockerfile directly, because you must set up your own internal host of the Oracle clients and modify the `wget` step shown here to retrieve them.

USER root

RUN
    wget https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/<s3-bucket-name>/instantclient-basic-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip
         -O /home/ubuntu/instantclient-basic-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip &&
    wget https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/<s3-bucket-name>/instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip
         -O /home/ubuntu/instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip &&
    cd /home/ubuntu &&
    unzip instantclient-basic-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip &&
    unzip instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip &&
    mv instantclient_12_1 /usr/local/lib &&
    rm instantclient-basic-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip &&
    rm instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip &&
    apt-get install -y libaio1

RUN
    echo 'export OCI_LIB=/usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1'
          >> /home/ubuntu/.domino-defaults &&
    echo 'export OCI_INC=/usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1/sdk/include'
          >> /home/ubuntu/.domino-defaults &&
    echo 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH'
          >> /home/ubuntu/.domino-defaults

RUN
    cd /usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1 &&
    ln -sf libclntsh.so.12.1 libclntsh.so &&
    chown -R ubuntu:ubuntu /usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1

RUN
    echo '/usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1'
          > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/oracle-instantclient.conf &&
    ldconfig -v

RUN pip install cx_Oracle --upgrade

USER ubuntu

Set the following Domino environment variables to store secure information about your Oracle connection.
- ORACLE_HOST
  
  Hostname where your database is running. Make sure your Oracle host and network firewall are configured to accept connections from Domino.
- ORACLE_SERVICE
  
  The service name of the Oracle service running on the target host.
- ORACLE_USER
  
  The Oracle user you want to authenticate as.
- ORACLE_PASSWORD
  
  Password for the user specified previously.
  
  See Secure Credential Storage to learn more about Domino environment variables.

See the cx_Oracle documentation for information about how to use the package. The following is an example to connect to Oracle with cx_Oracle where:

You have set up environment variables with the hostname, service name, username, and password.
Your user has access to a database named houses in the target Oracle instance.

from __future__ import print_function
import cx_Oracle
import os

# fetch values from environment variables and set the target database
hostname = os.environ['ORACLE_HOST']
service  = os.environ['ORACLE_SERVICE']
username = os.environ['ORACLE_USER']
password = os.environ['ORACLE_PASSWORD']
connection_string = hostname + "/" + service

# Connect as user "hr" with password "welcome" to the "oraclepdb" service running on this computer.
connection = cx_Oracle.connect(username, password, connection_string)

cursor = connection.cursor()
cursor.execute("""
    SELECT address
    FROM houses
    WHERE zip = 90210""")
for address in cursor:
    print("Address:", address)

R and ROracle

To interact with Oracle databases from R, Domino recommends the ROracle library.

Use the following Dockerfile instruction to install the Oracle client drivers and RODBC in your environment.

Note	You cannot copy and paste this Dockerfile directly because you must set up your own internal host of the Oracle clients and modify the `wget` step shown here to retrieve them.

USER root

RUN
    wget https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/<s3-bucket-name>/instantclient-basic-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip
         -O /home/ubuntu/instantclient-basic-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip &&
    wget https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/<s3-bucket-name>/instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip
         -O /home/ubuntu/instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip &&
    cd /home/ubuntu &&
    unzip instantclient-basic-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip &&
    unzip instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip &&
    mv instantclient_12_1 /usr/local/lib &&
    rm instantclient-basic-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip &&
    rm instantclient-sdk-linux.x64-12.1.0.2.0.zip &&
    apt-get install -y libaio1

RUN
    echo 'export OCI_LIB=/usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1'
          >> /home/ubuntu/.domino-defaults &&
    echo 'export OCI_INC=/usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1/sdk/include'
          >> /home/ubuntu/.domino-defaults &&
    echo 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH'
          >> /home/ubuntu/.domino-defaults

RUN
    cd /usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1 &&
    ln -s libclntsh.so.12.1 libclntsh.so &&
    chown -R ubuntu:ubuntu /usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1

RUN
    echo '/usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1'
          > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/oracle-instantclient.conf &&
    ldconfig -v

RUN
    cd /home/ubuntu &&
    wget https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/ROracle_1.3-1.tar.gz &&
    R CMD INSTALL --configure-args='--with-oci-inc=/usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1/sdk/include --with-oci-lib=/usr/local/lib/instantclient_12_1' ROracle_1.3-1.tar.gz

USER ubuntu

Set up the following Domino environment variables to store secure information about your Oracle connection.
- ORACLE_HOST
  
  Hostname where your database is running. Make sure your Oracle host and network firewall are configured to accept connections from Domino.
- ORACLE_SERVICE
  
  The service name of the Oracle service running on the target host.
- ORACLE_USER
  
  The Oracle user you want to authenticate as.
- ORACLE_PASSWORD
  
  Password for the user specified previously.
  
  See Secure Credential Storage to learn more about Domino environment variables.
See the ROracle documentation for usage details.

Next steps

After connecting to your Data Source, learn how to Use Data Sources.
Share this Data Source with your collaborators.