Installing OracleXE

We have been adding support for Oracle into SDB. As part of that, I installed Oracle XE ("Oracle Database 10g Express Edition") on my WindowsXP machine at work, which is part of a Windows domain.

It didn't go smoothly. I hope these notes help someone else trying to do the same thing.

Summary

• Install when logged in as administrator (NOT a domain user, even if in group Administrators).
• In order to use the command line SQL interface, you need to change SQLNET.ORA from (NTS) to (none)

Account

The Oracle installation instructions say to log in with administrative privileges and be attached to the domain.

The installation proceeded with no errors, and the 5 Windows services start up OK. But I found that I could not connect to the database web-based admin interface.

An additional symptom was that I can't change my domain password, nor create Windows local user accounts. In both cases, the error was that the password does not meet the requirements on characters and length. HP has tighter guidelines than the default for passwords but why installation of OracleXE broke a part of WindowsXP, I don't understand. After uninstalling OracleXE, I could change my password and create local user accounts as usual.

There are lots of articles about not being about to contact the database home page but only a few were related to the situation I had: this one was most useful (that link is into the OracleXE forum which is not publicly readable - you have to register first).

A way to see if your installation has been affected is to see if there is a file server\dbs\SPFILEXE.ORA. If not, the installation is probably broken.

Logging in as the local administrator account, uninstalling, reinstalling got an installation where I could get to the database home page and administer the database. I guess any local user account in group Administarors would work.

But sqlplus.exe still didn't work. (The error is "ORA-12638: Credential retrieval failed"). Following that thread again, I changed SQLNET.ORA to  SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES = (none)  and could connect to the database from the SQL command prompt.

Afterwards ...

Installing on Windows XP/Home worked fine but that is not a domained machine.

And after all that, the SDB SPARQL test suite runs perfectly with OracleXE.