ROracle 1.3, patched for Windows

This is a patched version of ROracle 1.3, forked from https://github.com/cran/ROracle. It fixes two build errors in Windows:

1. Adds a missing file (ociver.h) into the Windows configure script. For background on the bug, which is unfixed upstream for 5 years as of November 2023, see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52215350/roracle-package-installation-failure.

2. Quotes the pathname to the Oracle client, avoiding build failures when the pathname contains spaces.

Installation in Windows

To build and install ROracle in Windows from this repo:

1. Install the Oracle client on your PC. You need at least the Basic and SDK packages.

2. Set the ORACLE_HOME environment variable to the root directory of wherever you installed the Oracle client. (In Windows Explorer, go to Computer or This PC > Properties > Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables.)

3. Install RTools.

4. Install the devtools package in R.

5. Set environment variables in R:

   Oracle_home <- Sys.getenv("ORACLE_HOME")
   Sys.setenv(
     OCI_LIB64 = Oracle_home,
     OCI_LIB = Oracle_home,
     OCI_INC = paste0(Oracle_home, "/sdk/include"),
     PATH = paste0(Sys.getenv("PATH"), ";", Oracle_home, ";", R.home(), "/bin/x64")
   )
   

6. You can now build and install the package from this repo's source. Run

   options(configure.args = paste0("--with-oci-lib=", Oracle_home, " --with-oci-inc=", Oracle_home, "/sdk/include"))
   devtools::install_github("andrew-schulman/ROracle")
   

See also the INSTALL file in the package source.

Using ROracle in Windows

At run time, before you can load ROracle in Windows, you have to update the PATH environment variable to include the R and Oracle home directories:

Sys.setenv(
  PATH = paste0(Sys.getenv("PATH"), ";", Sys.getenv("ORACLE_HOME"), ";", R.home(), "/bin/x64")
)

If you don't do that, then when you try to use ROracle, for example by calling dbConnect(ROracle::Oracle(), ...), you'll get an error like this one:

Error: package or namespace load failed for ‘ROracle’ in inDL(x, as.logical(local), as.logical(now), ...):
 unable to load shared object 'C:/Users/aschulma/Software/R/win-library/4.3/ROracle/libs/x64/ROracle.dll':
  LoadLibrary failure:  The specified module could not be found.