Connect to multiple versions of Oracle DB with PHP PDO_OCI - php

Question

i need a ubuntu 20.04 server with php 7.4 to connect multiple version of oracle databases.
i installed the oracle instantclient in version 18.3 and load the oci8 php module.
for new version of oracle databases this works great. for older the connection failed.
these instantclient version is installed:
ii oracle-instantclient18.3-basic 18.3.0.0.0-4 amd64 Oracle Instant Client Basic package
ii oracle-instantclient18.3-devel 18.3.0.0.0-4 amd64 Development headers for Instant Client.
ii oracle-instantclient18.3-jdbc 18.3.0.0.0-4 amd64 Supplemental JDBC features for the Oracle Instant Client
ii oracle-instantclient18.3-odbc 18.3.0.0.0-4 amd64 Oracle Instant Client ODBC
this is the php version:
PHP 7.4.3 (cli) (built: Oct 6 2020 15:47:56) ( NTS
basically this version have to be supported:
oracle db 9.2.0.6.0
oracle db 9-0.1.3.1
oracle db 11g 11.2.0.1.0
oracle db 12c 12.2.0.1.0
oracle db 19c 12.2.0.3
oracle db 19c 19.0.0.0.0
this is the current code:
<?php
$dbstr ="(DESCRIPTION =(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST =<SERVERNAME>)(PORT = 1521))
(CONNECT_DATA =
(SERVER = DEDICATED)
(SERVICE_NAME = <SRVNAME>)))";
if(!#($conn = oci_connect('<user>','<pass>',$dbstr)))
{
print_r(ocierror());
die("Connect Error");
}
?>
is it possible? i need some hint how to realize this

Answer 1

Oracle 9.0.1 is old. Like "gosh, look how many floppies this comes on" old. And it was a release that was pretty quickly desupported in favor of Oracle 9.2.
If you look at the Client/ Server Interoperability Matrix (Metalink account required), you have to go down to the extended matrix because the summary matrix doesn't even include 9.0.1 any longer. There, you'll see that the last version of the Oracle client that was compatible with a 9.0.1 database was 10.1.0. I'm pretty sure that predates the Oracle Instant Client so you'd probably need to install the full 10.1 client. You'll probably need to put in a support request to get access to versions of the client that old-- Oracle generally doesn't bother to make links to something that old available.
Assuming you do get a version of the client that is sufficiently ancient, it was certainly not certified on the version of Ubuntu or PHP you're using. It might install and work just fine. You might need to go with earlier versions of both.
I would strongly suggest going back to whatever lead to these requirements to make really, really sure that they understand the costs of supporting 20 year old software. If someone told you to build a new web site and to make sure that it was compatible with Firefox 2 (released in 2006), you'd point out that there would be pretty significant costs to trying to support a 15 year old browser doing so for very little gain-- there aren't a lot of Firefox 2 browsers left in the world. Oracle 9.0.1 is 5 years older than that and there are very, very few folks still running that version left in the world.