Chris Beaumont wrote:

Hello,

Newbie question here... Thank you for any and all help...

The subject line says it all..

What's the best way to connect an instance of Zope running on a Linux box to an instance of Oracle 7.3 running on a Solaris box in the same subnet...

You have to set up the Oracle client library (OCI) on the Linux box. The (slightly) tricky part is setting up the file Oracle SQL*Net uses to know where the server(s) are. That file is $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/tnsnames.ora (I could be slightly off-key on the path, but is certainly named tnsnames.ora). In there, you create an entry for each Oracle instance you want to access (see the manual or use one of the examples provided - if you cannot figure it out, mail me and I'll provide an example; I do not have Oracle installed here at home). Then you set up your database connection within Zope just as if it were a local database - Zope will not know, as the Oracle library (wit SQL*Net) hides this detail quite effectively. I have such a set-up working on Oracle 7.3 server on Solaris (Zope is on a Sparcstation 5 running Solaris 7, the Oracle Server is an Enterprise 4000 running Solaris 2.6 for now). You probably do not want to use ODBC. It tends to be slower, and generally is another layer of software that can break without giving you enough benefit for the hassle, in my opinion.) On a different key, I'll try out Interbase on my testbed system and see how that works. Looks like a viable alternative, for now. Much smaller footprint than Oracle, and significantly cheaper. HTH, Jan