Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Charlie Gough -
Number of replies: 18

Hello All

I am a new member to the boards here and New to moodle.  I am currently working as a trainee DBA at Yeovil College, and also studying for a degree there.  And have recently been introduced to moodle by the lecturers that set it up.  My question is Whether Any body has managed to Integrate Moodle with Oracle?

The main reason I am interested in this, is because I have been asked to integrate Moodle with Oracle, so that when a new course is set up in one of the Oracle databases, there could be an option to create a moodle course, and when a student is enrolled they automatically get enrolled on the courses that they are studying, (if they have a moodle course). 

Any Replies would be grateful

Charlie

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In reply to Charlie Gough

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Tom Murdock -
Hey Charlie,

I don't know a great deal about databases, but I know that in a Moodle installation if you login as an admin that you can visit the ADMINISTRATION/AUTHENTICATION page, then choose to authenticate an external database, you'll see that you can already authenticate users off from an oracle database.

You might want to look at these options in the sourcecode in the AUTH folder (http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/moodle/moodle/auth/) before you go too far. I know your question is slightly different than what I answer, but they are probably related.

best,
Tom
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In reply to Tom Murdock

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Marcus Green -
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It should be far easier to do an authentication/authorisation against an Oracle database than it would be to entirely convert Moodle to Oracle.
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In reply to Marcus Green

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Charlie Gough -

Right with the authentication/authorisation, is this able to been done with very little modifications to Moodle and Oracle?

Like I said I am a newbee at this Moodle stuff.

Regards

Charlie

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In reply to Charlie Gough

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Martin Dougiamas -
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No modification required at all!  Like Tom said, see Admin >> User >> Authentication >> Database.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Charlie Gough -

Would this allow Oracle to see Moodle and Moodle to see Oracle???

So if I have a system that automatically creates a computer account, in the active directory structure, when a user is enrolled on a course, would this then automatically create a new moodle user with the same password and login name as there login for their college accounts???

Its very difficult to explain as I have been set the task by my lecturer at college/uni, to do for part of my course, but I also work for the college's MIS department.  If there is not enough information here, please reply or e-mail and I can provide some more details...

Regards

Charlie

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In reply to Charlie Gough

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Martín Langhoff -
Moodle supports Postgres (grab 1.4.2+ or the upcoming 1.4.3 for better Postgres support), and the Postgres syntax is almost identical to Oracle's syntax. You may have to fiddle with a few things, but things should work.
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In reply to Martín Langhoff

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Christian Glameyer -

I searched for a clue how to use Moodle with an Oracle Database. Though I know something about the problems involved I am not really an expert in databases or php. I searched the forums and I got so far: Using Oracle instead of Postgres or MySQL is possible, but you have to fix things. There are postings that say that you have to build the tables in the database manually, others say, that using Oracle it is rather simple. Most of the threads just stuck (like this one) without a hint what you have to do ...

Since our administration (for some reason) only supports Oracle I am searching for a stable and secure way to use Moodle with Oracle.

Can anyone give a hint to a concrete solution of this problem?

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In reply to Christian Glameyer

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Steve Power -

No solution but I also ended up here when trying to find one. We are in the process of introducing Moodle and have a campus licence for Oracle so the IT guys would like to use it. I am happy to use MySQL or Oracle which ever is likely to make my life easier into the future.

Is anyone able to answer? Has anyone done this?

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In reply to Christian Glameyer

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Tim Tate -

I searched the forums and I got so far: Using Oracle instead of Postgres or MySQL is possible, but you have to fix things.

That's all I've been able to find so far myself.  Please, if anyone has info on how to get started with this, it would be greatly appreciated.  Can I just do a search for "Postgres" and replace with "Oracle" if the syntax is nearly identical?

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In reply to Charlie Gough

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Marcelo Murad -
Charlie,

If I got your question right, none of the answers were for your first question. I have to do the same thing you first asked. Did you got it to work?

Regards,
Marcelo
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In reply to Marcelo Murad

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Carlos Delgado -
Hi,

I have the same question, do any of you have any answer?

Maybe any moodle developer?

I'm currently evaluating some LMS for a large implementation, and obviously the BD connectivity is key, as well as the community support...

Thanks,

Carlos
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In reply to Carlos Delgado

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Martín Langhoff -
Um. There are excellent replies in this thread. Read the whole thread.

Two hints:

- Moodle can use Oracle as its storage DB. Oracle is not particularly recommended, but it works.

- Moodle can look up data in Oracle for authentication and enrolment. See the 'authentication' and 'enrolment' forums where people discuss those topics.
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In reply to Carlos Delgado

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Iñaki Arenaza -
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As Martin has said, you can use Oracle with Moodle, but it's not widely used and certainly not in large implementations.

We are using it in a small site (< 4000 users) and is good enough for us, but have heard of perfomance issues in bigger installations. Plus there are still some SQL bugs lying around (that bite us from time to time; fortunately we have some Oracle-savvy in house and that helps a lot smile).

Not to discourage you, just so you can make an informed decission smile

Saludos. Iñaki.

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In reply to Iñaki Arenaza

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Facundo Ortiz -

Hi Iñaki, I have an Oracle 11g database in production right now and I want to install Moodle. Do you know what tipes of issues I´ll have? It´s for 2 thousand users, may be 3... Is it fully compatible, or we must to "touch" something?

Thanks a lot, Facundo (Gracias!! guiño)

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In reply to Facundo Ortiz

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Iñaki Arenaza -
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Sorry for the dalay Facundo. I wasn't monitoring this forum any longer sad

We are not using all the available modules (standard or from third parties) so our setup might be a little simpler and "safer" than most.

Apart from the case sensitive search 'bug' (e.g., searches are almost always case sensitive if you are use Oracle, while they are case insensitive if you use MySQL) I can't remember of any SQL bug in the recent releases (1.9.4 and 1.9.5), but as I say, we are only using a (reasonable) subset of the functionality so far.

Saludos.
Iñaki.
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In reply to Iñaki Arenaza

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by David Kelly -
We have installed Moodle 1.9.5 on a Windows server with PHP 5.2.6 and an Oracle 11g database. We are using FastCGI and Xcache on the Windows server.

While everything works, it seems to be terribly slow, even with the FastCGI and Xcache. We suspect that some of this has to do with the PHP-Oracle interaction and some with the queries as written in Moodle. However, we have just started looking into these areas.

Does anyone else have a setup like this? If so, is it taking a regular user with 3-4 courses around 4-5 seconds to load the My Moodle page? We are seeing a good chunk of this time as database activity - hence our suspicions in that area.

We would appreciate any suggestions that folks with experience could give us.

By the way, in case anyone is using Banner as their ERP, we have written scripts to automatically update our Moodle tables with user and course data from Banner's Oracle tables.

Cordially,
David Kelly
Dickinson College
kellyda@dickinson.edu
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In reply to David Kelly

Re: Databases: Successful Oracle/Moodle Integration

by Biswajit Sahu -

Hello,

I am installing moddle with oracle datbase with windows 2003. I have installd PHP 5.2, Oracle 9.  when i try to run moodle installation it gives me error on datbase configuration page.

Use of undefined constant OCI_COMMIT_ON_SUCCESS - assumed 'OCI_COMMIT_ON_SUCCESS' in D:\WebData\mse\moodle\lib\adodb\adodb.inc.php on line 4101

PHP has not been properly configured with the OCI8 extension so that it can communicate with Oracle. Please check your php.ini file or recompile PHP.

also i am not sure what name be use at table prefix place.  Anybody solve my issue.

Thanks,

Biswajit 


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