$Id: README,v 1.7 2006/04/07 19:56:13 jeff Exp $

extproc_perl enables Oracle stored procedures and functions to be written
in Perl.  It uses Oracle's external procedure interface to create Perl
interpreters on the fly to execute Perl subroutines.  These interpreters
are persistent throughout the life of the database session.

Please send all bug reports, questions and suggestions to jeff@smashing.org,
or join the mailing list.  More information can be found at
http://www.smashing.org/extproc_perl.

REQUIREMENTS
------------
o A version of Solaris or Linux supported by Oracle
o Perl 5.6.1 or later
o shared libperl, threading disabled (threading perl crashes extproc_perl)
o Oracle 8i (8.1.7 or later) or 9i server with OCI development libraries and
  headers (problems have been reported with versions earlier than 8.1.7)
o DBI and DBD::Oracle 1.15
o Parse::RecDescent

DOCUMENTATION
-------------
There is a comprehensive user's guide available on the web at
http://www.smashing.org/extproc_perl/userguide.html.  This is the official
documentation for extproc_perl.

TESTING
-------
WARNING: The test suite is very immature.  Failures DO NOT indicate that
extproc_perl will not run on your system, but you should feel free to report
them.

Before you run 'make test', you need to do several things to set up your
environment, some of which you may be familiar with from DBD::Oracle:

* Set the ORACLE_SID environment variable to the name of your database.
* Set the ORACLE_USERID environment variable with your username and password
  separated by a slash (e.g. user1/foobar).
* If you are using Oracle 9.2.0 or higher, add the following line to the
  SID_DESC section of your external procedure listener configuration:

  (ENVS="EXTPROC_DLLS=ANY")

  Your configuration should look something like this:

    (SID_DESC =
      (SID_NAME = PLSExtProc)
      (ORACLE_HOME = /u01/app/oracle/product/9.2.0)
      (PROGRAM = extproc)
      (ENVS="EXTPROC_DLLS=ANY")
    )

  Reload the listener with 'lsnrctl reload' and you should be ready to test.

  IMPORTANT!!!  Remove this configuration once you're finished testing.  The
  test version of extproc_perl enables some testing features that are not
  suitable for production use.