Category: SQL*Net, Protocol Server
June 8

DBMS_XDB.SETLISTENERLOCALACCESS

I noticed an new addition to the DBMS_XDB package a while ago named SETLISTENERLOCALACCESS that, despite it is part of a XMLDB package, was first seen by me on a APEX forum (it is not listed in the Oracle 10g manuals (eg. Oracle® Database PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference).

What does it do?

The manual (Oracle® Database Express Edition Installation Guide !) described it as follows:

4.4 Making Oracle Database XE Server Available to Remote Clients
After you install Oracle Database XE Server, its graphical user interface is only available from the local server, not remotely.

    Security Note:

    With remote HTTP access to Oracle Database XE, all information exchanged between the browser and the database is in clear text—that is, unencrypted—including database user names and passwords. If this is cause for concern, do not enable remote HTTP connection to the database.

Asking for an explanation on the XMLDB forum the following information was given:

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June 6

HOWTO: Enable the Protocol Server (Listener)

On itself, this one is very simple, but to my surprise it still not very clear when I read the questions about this on the OTN XMLDB forum. Maybe this occurs because this isn’t mentioned on the OTN XMLDB FAQ thread, which isn’t read as much as it should be. A lot of really good examples of Mark (Drake) are described in more detail here, and the are definitely worth your time.

So how to enable the WebDAV, HTTP(s) and FTP(s) functionality via the protocol server?

Before Oracle database version 10.2 this is done default (HTTP on port 8080, FTP on port 2100). After (and in my opinion this is the correct behavior) port numbers are set to 0 (zero) and therefore this functionality is disabled.

The XMLDB Protocol Server functionality is configured and controlled via the xdbconfig.xml file. Updating this file via SQL statements is described in the following section.

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December 18

APEX installation via the Oracle Protocol Server (listener)

From time to time, people on the OTN XMLDB forum, ask if it is possible to connect via the Oracle Protocol Server (aka the Oracle Listener), for instance in combination with APEX and DBMS_EPG. I am not sure if it is an already official supported environment, but the following works as demonstrated in this step-by-step manual

Ingredients

Ingredients needed:

  • Oracle RDBMS 10.2.0.3.0 (Enterprise Edition) and/of higher version
  • APEX 2.2.1
  • Windows 2003 / XP
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