Purpose: Discuss the Tcl <-> Oracle DBMS binding 


http://oratcl.sf.net/ is the home page for this package binding Oracle to Tcl.

Insert your favorite Oratcl tips, tricks, and hints, etc. here.
Also, point to various useful reading, such as [BOOK Tcl/Tk Tools],
or [BOOK Oracle and Open Source].

"Cinderella languages" [http://sw.itworld.com/swol-08-1999/swol-08-regex.html]
is a published article on Oratcl's origins.

[Tom Poindexter] created Oratcl.  [Todd M. Helfter] currently maintains it.
Tom Poindexter's Oratcl page http://www.nyx.net/~tpoindex/tcl.html has
a little bit about Oratcl, but the primary work on the extension is being
done by Todd via the [SourceForge] project.


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Also add here information about tips for managing [Unicode], images, etc. from within Oracle tables.

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Todd points out that, "OraTcl relies on the Oracle install.  This means different things on different platforms.

On Unix, the ORACLE_HOME environment variable must point to a valid Oracle
install.

On windows, the ociw32.lib file must be found in the WINDOWS search path.
In the past, I have had to place the oracle directory in the windows PATH
variable in autoexec.bat.  In later releases, the registry information was
sufficient to find the file."

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Tcl has other connections to [COMPANY: Oracle].

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[tksql] is an application for editing [PostgreSQL] (''not'' Oracle) tables. 
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[LV] For which version of Oratcl is this template - I seem to recall that
at version changes, the paradigm used by oratcl programs had to change...

A recent article on comp.lang.tcl by [Kevin Rodgers] asked for
comments about this sample boilerplate:

 # For error reporting:
 set program [file tail $argv0]

 # Package interface:
 package require Oratcl

 # Connect to the $env(TWO_TASK) database as USER with PASSWORD:
 if [catch {oralogon "USER/PASSWORD"} ora_logon] {
    puts stderr "$program: $ora_logon"
    exit 1
 }
 if [catch {oraopen $ora_logon} ora_statement] {
    oralogoff $ora_logon
    puts stderr "$program: $ora_statement"
    exit 1
 }
 #if [catch {oraconfig $ora_statement fetchrows 1024} ora_error] {
 #    puts stderr "$program: $ora_error"
 #} 

 # Execute SQL statement:
 set sql "SELECT column_1, ... column_N FROM ... WHERE ..."
 # Note that for Oratcl 4.x, the $oramsg references have to change to
 # [oramsg $ora_statement rc]
 if [catch {orasql $ora_statement $sql} ora_error] {
    puts stderr "$program: $ora_error"
 } elseif {$oramsg(rc) != 0} {
    puts stderr "$program: $oramsg(errortxt)"
 } else {
    # Process each row with column_I bound to var_I:
    while {$oramsg(rc) == 0} {
        if [catch {orafetch $ora_statement \
                            {... $var_1 ... $var_N ...} \
                            '@' var_1 1 ... var_N N} \
                  ora_error] {
            puts stderr "$program: $ora_error"
            break
        } elseif {$oramsg(rc) == 1403} {
            break
        } elseif {$oramsg(rc) != 0} {
            puts stderr "$program: $oramsg(errortxt)"
            break
        }
    }
 }

 # Disconnect from the $env(TWO_TASK) database:
 if [catch {oraclose $ora_statement ora_error] {
    puts stderr "$program: $ora_error"
 }
 if [catch {oralogoff $ora_logon ora_error] {
    puts stderr "$program: $ora_error"
 }

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