Installing Oracle XE 10g on Ubuntu 10.10 Server and VMWare Fusion 3.1

The following blog post is purely for my own purposes, to document how to install Oracle XE 10g on Ubuntu 10.10 Server as a VM under VMWare Fusion 3.1 on Mac OS X 10.6.6.

These instructions are gathered from numerous internet resources and much of the credit must be given to these authors for their superb guides. The main difference for my guide is the inclusion of screenshots which I prefer over text or video, and the occasional fix where the original instructions didn’t work for me. Reference to the external authors is given throughout this article.

Installing Ubuntu 10.10 Server on VMWare Fusion

Opening credit must go to Ted Wise for his XE on Mac guide. Ted’s guide is very indepth detailing the exact options for installing Ubuntu’s JeOS 8.04. Ubuntu doesn’t appear to have a JeOS download for 10.10 so my instructions are the Ubuntu 10.10 Server .iso instead.

First download the Ubuntu “i386” 10.10 Server edition as the Oracle XE .deb package downloaded later is “i386” too. I’m a little unsure why, but there doesn’t appear to be a 64bit version of the i386 ISO for Ubuntu, but there is an Ubuntu amd64 server release for 10.10. While the amd64 version will run in VMWare Fusion, later on attempting to install the Oracle XE .deb package, it will complain it’s only for the i386 platform, which makes the amd64 Ubuntu unviable.

There’s obviously something I don’t know about the Ubuntu supported platforms and the relating ISOs.

iiNet (local Aussie ISP) provides a handy mirror.

Once downloaded open the VMWare Fusion. From the menu select File -> New which opens the New Virtual Machine Assistant wizard:

Select the “Continue without disc” button which opens the Installation Media page in the wizard:

Select the “Use operating system installation disc image file” radio button. This will open a select file dialog where you select the Ubuntu 10.10 Server i386 iso:

Presenting the following options in the previous dialog:

Selecting “Continue” presents the Operating System page. By default Linux and Ubuntu should already be selected under the respective Operating System and Version options:

Selecting “Continue” presents the Linux Easy Install options:

Note in the above picture we unselect the “Use Easy Install” option as this will skip many of the options we want to configure when the Ubuntu installation starts in the VM. Selecting the “Continue” button will present the Finish page:

The default options for the VM are fine. However you can click the “Customize Settings” button to change them. Note on selecting either this button or the Finish button will display a save dialog asking you to name and place the VM file on the OSX file system. The default location appears to be /Users/(your username)/Documents/Virtual Machines:

Note in the above picture I already have a number of other Ubuntu VMs that were previous trials.

Once you press Save the VM will start and the Ubuntu installer will flash through some startup screens, quickly arriving at the first option to select English as the preferred language:

At the next screen select the “Install Ubuntu Server” option:

For whatever reason we’re prompted for the language again, “English damn you, English”:

Then select your country:

Select No at the “Detect keyboard layout” option:

Select USA on the “Origin of the keyboard” screen:

Wow, Ubuntu loves it’s keyboard options. Select USA at the “Keyboard layout” screen:

Change the hostname to something more suitable at the Hostname prompt on the next screen, such as “oraclexe”:

At the timezone prompt assuming the right default has been picked, press Yes:

The next set of steps owes all its credit to Ted Wise’s instructions. As Ted notes Oracle XE will require a Linux swap partition twice the size of the available RAM. This can be done post install but it’s easier done now through the install screens with no typing required. The first screen titled “Partitioned disks” select the Manual option:

On the next screen select the SCSI3 option representing the VMWare disk available to the VM:

The screen will warn you that we’re going to drop and recreate the partition, which we select the Yes prompt:

This returns to the previous screen where under the SCSI option you’ll see that there is an entry for the empty partition entitled “pri/log 21.5GB” which we select:

In the following screen select the “Create a new partition” option to create a new partition in the empty partition we just selected:

In the following screen downgrade the partition size from 21.5GB to 20GB. The remaining size will be used for the swap partition soon.

Select “Primary” to make this the primary partition:

Allow the partition to be created at the “Beginning” of the available space:

Select “Done setting up the partition” which completes the primary partition. Next we create the swap partition:

Returning to the main partition page, select the remaining “pri/log FREE SPACE” option, which will be used for the swap:

Again select the “Create a new partition” option:

Take the default 1.5GB partition space next which will allocate the remaining free space to the swap:

Again make this a Primary partition:

Select the “Use as” option as we want to change what the partition is used for:

Select “swap area” when prompted “How to use this partition”:

Then finally “Done setting up this partition”

Returning to the partitions screen select “Finish partitioning and write changes to disk”:

A final prompt warning you on your changes will display, select Yes:

At this point the installer will start copying and configuring files:

At the “Set up users and passwords” screen you have the chance to configure the primary none-root user. The first page prompts you for the user’s name, not the account name. However they can be the same. As seen in this screenshot “administrator” is entered:

Next screen you enter the actual user account name, again “administrator” is entered in this screenshot:

Over 2 screens you’ll be asked to enter and confirm a password for the new account:

Choose not to encrypt the home directory:

Only if you have a HTTP proxy between the internet and the Mac set the following options, otherwise just select Continue. The install requires access to the internet so it’s essential this is configured if required:

Now the installer will download and install additional files:

Select your preference at the screen prompting you how to apply security updates:

At the software selection page, as we want this to be a very small server install just to run Oracle XE, leave the software package selection undone:

At the GRUB Boot prompt select Yes:

Hurray!… the installation is complete:

On a reboot the VM will display the Ubuntu command line login:

On logging in using the administrator account created in the previous steps, force the Ubuntu Server to update itself using the APT package installer via the following command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

When prompted press Y

Finally reboot the server:

sudo shutdown –r now

Install VMWare Tools

Here we depart from Ted's instructions. The Ubuntu Community documentation provides under the "Installing from Ubuntu package from VM-tools" heading the instructions for installing the VMWare Tools. A number of prescribed methods didn't work, including those requiring the VMWare Tools to be mounted via a virtual cdrom.

On logging in again as administrator, enter the following commands. Note the third command; as we've installed a UI-less Ubuntu Server we use this specific command (the Ubuntu documentation lists 2 options):

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-virtual
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends open-vm-dkms
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends open-vm-tools

Installing Oracle XE

First login as administrator and install the prerequisite libraries and packages:

sudo aptitude install libaio-dev
sudo apt-get install bc

Note that there appears to be some documentation around that indicates if Oracle XE is installed under Ubuntu 64bit, there are additional prerequisite libraries that must be installed including "bc" and "ia32-libs".

In the next step I had significant issues in using the usual method that most others used to download Oracle XE. As described in Ted's instructions, the typical manner is to download and Oracle XE is to add an entry to your /etc/apt/sources.list, use wget to retrieve the GPG key for the Oracle XE package and install it the APT repository, then finally download Oracle XE using APT.

Instead I came up with the following solution.

Via my browser I discovered the URL of the Oracle XE i386 deb package from the OTN web page was as follows:
http://download.oracle.com/otn/linux/oracle10g/xe/10201/oracle-xe_10.2.0.1-1.0_i386.deb

Still logged in as administrator, issue the following command changing the username and password to match your OTN username and password:

(Post edit: It appears the wget command can't deal with the licence prompt the Oracle website asks for. To solve this, in your Mac and your favourite browser, access the following page and accept the license condition. This will set your IP up to be allowed to download the software, such that both your Mac and the VMWare session can download the .deb file. Obviously another option is to download the .deb file onto your Mac, and then access it from your VMWare session)

wget --user=(username) --password=(password) http://download.oracle.com/otn/linux/oracle10g/xe/10201/oracle-xe_10.2.0.1-1.0_i386.deb

This will download the XE .deb file. Once completed we can install the .deb file using dpkg (more information on .deb files and dpkg can be found via Chris Buckridge's page):

sudo dpkg -i oracle-xe_10.2.0.1-1.0_i386.deb

Ensure to complete the usermod step next otherwise the administrator user will not be given correct privileges to install and start the database after a reboot:

(Post edit: there's a mistake in my notes here. Either the following command must be entered now, or, after the oracle-xe configure line next. Without reinstalling the whole VM it's currently hard for me to check this)

sudo usermod -g dba administrator

The next command configures and installs the database:

sudo /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure

At the prompts:

1) Enter a port for Apex, the default being 8080
2) Enter a port for the Oracle Listener, the default being 1521.
3) Enter a password for the SYS/SYSTEM database accounts.
4) When prompted enter Y to allow Oracle XE to be started with the VM boots.

For reference /etc/default/oracle-xe is the configuration file which stores these options.

Once completed, edit the following file via or similar:

vi ~/.bashrc

At the end of the file enter the following:

ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server
PATH=$PATH:$ORACLE_HOME/bin
export ORACLE_HOME
export ORACLE_SID=XE
export PATH

Finally we need to login to the database as system and allow remote access to the HTTP server:

sqlplus system/(password)
EXEC DBMS_XDB.SETLISTENERLOCALACCESS(FALSE);
quit;

Accessing the APEX homepage from the VM Host (not Guest)

Finally to access the APEX homepage from the VM Host, on the guest issue the command "ifconfig" which will reveal the current IP of the VM guest, listed under the "eth0" "inet addr" entry, as example 192.168.197.131.

On the VM Host, return to your favourite browser and enter: http://192.168.197.131:8080/apex

..and the APEX home page should display. Ensure you can login using the SYSTEM account.

It's worth checking from a tool like JDeveloper installed under OSX that you can also access the database.

Voila.

Check out the ADF content at this year's ODTUG KScope11 conference

For all ADF developers, I'd like the chance to point out that this year's ODTUG Kaleidscope '11 conference in Long Beach USA has a substantial amount of ADF presentations. In fact quite a few active members of the ADF EMG will be presenting this year which is great.

For anyone who doesn't know much about the KScope events, ODTUG's conference series highlights real world experience with developers who are actually using Oracle products in the field. For anyone who doesn't consider themselves an expert, the KScope conference provides a great opportunity to learn from the pros tips n tricks on how to get your ADF applications from development to production

In turn for Fusion MiddleWare there's just on 60 sessions covering topics from SOA to WebCenter and of course ADF. Further incentives include streams dedicated to PL/SQL, the database, Apex and more. (Oh, and apparently it's sunny and warm in Long Beach and there's beaches too!)

If you're interested in the content, specifically the Fusion MiddleWare content, check out: http://kscope11.com/fusion ...then select either the Symposium or Presentations links.

We hope to see you there.

ADF BC: Creating an "EXISTS" View Criteria

The EXISTS keyword in SQL queries is an efficient mechanism for returning record sets from one dataset when they exist in another dataset. For example we can write queries like:

SELECT org.org_id, org.name FROM organisations org WHERE EXISTS
(SELECT 1 FROM events evt WHERE evt.org_id = org.org_id
AND evt.contact_name = 'Eddie Harris')

....which returns all organisations which have a related event whose contact is Eddie Harris.

ADF Business Components in JDeveloper 11g allow the creation of EXISTS subqueries via the View Object named View Criteria feature. They're easy to implement if you already know how to create View Criteria, as long as you know one small trick.

Default Business Components

Given the SQL query above using the one-to-many organisations-to-events example, imagine we have default Entity Objects (EOs), EO Associations, View Objects (VOs) and VO Links, as seen in this picture:

View Object Link Accessors

When created via the Business Components from Table wizard, the VO Link OrgEvtFkLink created, based on the EO Association OrgEvtFkAssoc, will include Accessors options under its Relationship tab in the VO Link editor:

If you select the pencil icon next to the Accessors options it reveals the View Link Properties dialog:

....from which you can see the "Generate Accessor" option selected for the "In View Object: Organisations View". While the selected state is the default option when created, it's this option which is essential for setting up the EXISTS View Criteria.

View Object View Criteria

Once you've ensured the Accessor option is set as described above, when you create a new View Criteria for the View Object, Organisations in our case, we configure the View Criteria as follows. First in the Create View Criteria dialog we should change the View Criteria name to something more suitable to reflect what the View Criteria will do for us:

Next select the Add Criteria button, which will create the basis of the expression used by the query:

On selecting the Attribute drop down, you'll discover a list of attributes from the OrganisationsView VO. In this list you'll note an attribute called "EventsView". This attribute is only available because of the options you configured in the View Object Link Accessors above. If you hadn't gone with the default options, the EventsView attribute would not be available, and you would not be able to create the EXISTS View Criteria:

With the EventsView Accessor selected the dialog for the first time shows the EXISTS clause:

The only think left to do is to select the Criteria Group expression of the EXISTS statement, in the example above this is the "Event No =" option, and change this using the supplied options in the fields below, to the actual expression we want to use in the EXISTS clause. From our example this is matching the Events Contact Name to a String:

Once completed in the right hand side you can see the EXISTS subquery that the View Criteria will apply to the OrganisationsView VO when executed.

Note I've also turned off the Ignore Case and Ignore Null Values options.

Testing

In the Business Components Browser, on opening the OrganisationsView, and selecting the View Criteria via the Find button, we're first prompted for a value for the bind variable:

...which once supplied, returns the only matching Organisations record:

Thanks

Thanks to Eddie Harris at SAGE Computing Services for revealing the technique.

JDev: ADF BC and ADF Libraries: The Library Private property

ADF Libraries are a very useful feature of JDeveloper 11g. They allow a master application, via the Resource Palette, to load Bounded Task Flows (BTFs) and the BTF's associated ADF Business Components from separate applications, without having to include the BTF and ADF BC objects in it's own application.
In the following picture you can see the Resource Palette exposing adflibChildBTF.jar, a BTF application containing both the ChildBTF bounded task flow, and it's associated Business Components including the ChildAppModule Application Module, Events Entity Object and so on:

If this ADF Library is loaded into a consuming application's ViewController project, the consuming application is free to call the adflibChildBTF's embedded Bounded Task Flow. However it's also free to call directly the Business Components of the adflibChildBTF. This is revealed by the Data Control Panel in the Application Navigator, it will by default include the Application Module of the child application as can be seen here:

Yet this isn't always desirable behaviour, the Child Application may not want to expose all its Business Components for easy picking by the consuming application. For example, you may have included a collection of test Business Components in the Child Application which really aren't appropriate for the consuming application to use, or, you may think it inappropriate for the consuming application to even reference the regular Business Components of the Child Application. How to fix?

When you open the editor for most Business Components including Application Modules, Entity Objects and View Objects, you may notice that the Property Inspector also reflects options for the selected and edited Business Component. In the Property Inspector for each Business Component there's typically a boolean property not included in the associated editors called Library Private. In the following diagram you can see the property inspector for the Application Module from the Child Application:

This property, when set to true for each Business Component (the default is false), means the Business Components will not be available in the Resource Palette when the ADF Library is redeployed (note: you must refresh the Resource Palette to see this effect):

As can be seen in the previous picture, the ChildAppModule Application Module is no longer available in the Resource Palette. In addition in the consuming Application's Data Control Palette, as we've hidden the ChildAppModule, simply it doesn't appear in the Data Control Palette:

Returning to the Resource Palette, you may in fact want to hide *all* of the Business Components. This requires you to simply set the Library Private property of each Business Component to true, and then regenerate the ADF Library JAR. We can see the end effect here:

However it must be noted, in the consuming application, this does not stop the consumed BTF from working. All the Library Private option is doing is hiding the Business Components from the IDE for the user to use. The Business Components are still used by Child Application/BTF when called from the caller at runtime.

Caveat

I've yet to fully use this feature, so be careful to check it works for you, your mileage will vary. If you find any issues I'd appreciate a comment to this blog post, to assist other readers.

Addendum

This feature is available in the latest version of JDev 11.1.1.4.0 through 11.1.1.2.0. It's possibly available in earlier versions, but I'll leave readers to check themselves as I no longer have these earlier JDev versions installed.

In addition this feature works within an Application too, such that the Business Components don't show in the Data Control Palette for the same Application's ViewController project.

A new EMG is born: WebCenter EMG

I'm happy to announce that the WebCenter EMG has opened its doors for business, run by Yannick Ongena and backed by a number of well known WebCenter personalities. Like it's older EMG siblings, the ADF EMG, OBIEE EMG and SOA-BPM EMG, the WebCenter EMG will be a place to discuss WebCenter design, best practices, testing, methodologies and similar, beyond the typical bugs and how-do-I-get-this-to-work questions on the OTN Forums.

I encourage everybody interested in "real" development with Oracle's WebCenter platform join the WebCenter EMG's Google Group today.

Good luck to Yannick in running this new group.