Recently, I have asked the list for advice with problems when  
compiling ROracle 0.5.7 on OSX 10.4.7/R.2.3.1 Thanks to Simon  
Urbanek's response, and with the support from Johan Söderberg at our  
department, I have manged to compile & load ROracle, and to actually  
connect to our Oracle server. Below, I have summarized the crucial  
points, hoping that it may be useful for people with similar tsuris.

1) Setting up the Oracle client: Johan installed the full  
Adminstrator client (Oracle 10g) on my machine. He notes two  
important things:

1.1) Our Oracle realease (10.1.0.3.0) doesn't work with gcc version  
4, so he needed to switch back to gcc version 3.3. You can do that by  
su:ing to root and using the gcc_select command, i.e.

	gcc_select 3.3

1.2) The default installation process created an empty library  
libclntst10.a This can be solved by regenerating it:

	$ cd $ORACLE_HOME/bin
	$ ./genclntst

where $RORACLE_HOME is the home directory for your Oracle  
installation (e.g. /opt/oracle/product/10g/client)

2) Compiling ROracle:  Again, two crucial things:

2.1) Make sure that you have a patched or development version of R  
2.3.1, or, as Simon instructed edit the file Library/Frameworks/ 
R.framework/Resources/bin/COMPILE by changing line 31 from

	makefiles="-f \"${R_HOME}/etc/Makeconf\""

to

	makefiles="-f \"${R_HOME}/etc${R_ARCH}/Makeconf\""

2.2) I included the option --configure-args='--enable-extralibs' when  
compiling, otherwise R reported it did not find the symbol _sqlcxt.  
In other words, for a local installation, I run

	R CMD INSTALL --configure-args='--enable-extralibs' --library=~/ 
Library/R/library/ ROracle_0.5-7.tar.gz

3) Loading ROracle: You need DBI installed for that, but that never  
was a problem to build or install; this is the weird part: you have  
to load ROracle TWICE!! On my machine:

 > require(ROracle)
Loading required package: ROracle
Loading required package: DBI
Error in dyn.load(x, as.logical(local), as.logical(now)) :
	unable to load shared library '/Users/aleplo/Library/R/library/ 
ROracle/libs/ppc/ROracle.so':
   dlopen(/Users/aleplo/Library/R/library/ROracle/libs/ppc/ 
ROracle.so, 6): Library not loaded: /opt/oracle/product/10g/client/ 
lib/libnnz10.dylib
   Referenced from: /opt/oracle/product/10g/client/lib/libsqlplus.dylib
   Reason: image not found
[1] FALSE
 > require(ROracle)
Loading required package: ROracle
[1] TRUE

4) Using ROracle: from that point on, no problem - I could do the  
example in ?Oracle.


  Configuration:
===========

R:
platform       powerpc-apple-darwin8.6.0
arch           powerpc
os             darwin8.6.0
system         powerpc, darwin8.6.0
status
major          2
minor          3.1
year           2006
month          06
day            01
svn rev        38247
language       R
version.string Version 2.3.1 (2006-06-01)

ROracle: 0.5-7

Mac OS X:
ProductVersion: 10.4.7
BuildVersion:   8J135
Architecture:	PPC

Oracle 10g: Release 10.1.0.3.0


Alexander.Ploner@ki.se
Medical Epidemiology & Biostatistics
Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm
Tel: ++46-8-524-82329
Fax: ++46-8-31 49 75



	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

