jerry_th

Oracle has released a free version of Oracle 10, at last !, with very few limitations ( none that should matter if you are not running an enterprise system ) that you can use and/or distribute with your apps etc.... As stated before, Oracle has very many features and to compare these to other db's in a note like this is not possible.

Try with installing Oracle instant client and set the env variable TNS_ADMIN to where you have your tnsnames file. You can then check your access with sqlplus to the user/db where you have your web server.

Oracle stored procedures uses strict type checking on parameters and allow overlayed procedures, so whenever you make a call to a stored procedure you must have matching argument types for the procedure. If you try to call "xproc( a varchar(2))" with "xproc( :number_var)" Oracle thinks this is a different procedure. So if you are using a call depending on the argument position, they must match on type and position. Pocedures may have default values that you may omit if they are placed last or if you are refering to your args by their names. /Jerry