ConText and Other Options

Oracle Database 10g can handle data types such as relational data, object-relational data, XML, text, audio, images, video, and spatial data. These data types are stored as native types in the database, making the data searchable using SQL, even when different types are combined.

XML is treated as a native data type in the database. Oracle XML DB provides new capabilities for both content-oriented and data-oriented access.

Oracle introduced ConText and interMedia Text in versions prior to Oracle 9i, where data from tables, files, or URLs could be searched on. Starting with Oracle 9i, the whole concept was renamed "Oracle Text." Oracle Text leverages scalability features such as replication and supports a local partitioned index. Oracle Text is set up in the SYSAUX tablespace (with CTXSYS as schema owner) by default unless you create a separate tablespace and do a manual installation of Oracle Text in that tablespace.

Oracle UltraSearch is another way to index and search database tables, websites, files, Oracle Application Server portals, and other data sources. Oracle Ultra Search uses a crawler to index documents and builds an index in the designated Oracle database. It allows concept searching and theme analysis, and supports full globalization including Unicode. Oracle provides complete APIs to work with Oracle Text, UltraSearch, interMedia, and Oracle Spatial options.

Oracle interMedia helps to develop and deploy traditional, online, and wireless applications with multimedia content (images, audio, and video). These kinds of multimedia data can be stored and managed directly in or outside Oracle. Oracle interMedia allows access to multimedia content from within the database web as well as external locations (the Internet).

Oracle Spatial allows users to store, index, and manage location content (buildings, roads, and so on, as in online map portals) and query location relationships (driving directions and what have you) using the database. It also supports linear reference and coordinate systems for geographic mapping. Oracle Spatial has its own spatial indexing mechanism.

Oracle Database 10g also enables you to perform XML searches in documents using the Oracle Text, the Oracle XML DB framework, and a combination of Oracle Text features with Oracle XML DB features. For more details on Oracle Text, refer to the Oracle Text Reference 10g guide.

The next section will discuss the manual installation process for Oracle Text.

Manual Installation of Oracle Text

If you have done a database upgrade from Oracle 9i, Oracle Text would have been automatically upgraded along with it. Similar to the manual installation of XML DB, however, you can set up Oracle Text manually. Please refer to Oracle's platform-specific installation guides for more details. For manual installation, do the following steps:

1.	Change the library path environment variables for your platform to include the ORACLE_HOME/ctx/lib directory.
2.	Login as SYS and create default and temporary tablespaces for Oracle Text.
3.	Run the ORACLE_HOME/ctx/admin/dr0csys.sql script to create the CTXSYS user.
4.	Connect as the CTXSYS user and run ORACLE_HOME/ctx/admin/dr0inst.sql to create and populate the required data dictionary tables.
5.	Choose the language-specific script (drdefXX.sql, where XX is the language code) from the ORACLE_HOME/ctx/admin/defaults directory. This completes the required steps; exit the SQLPlus session.

You can de-install Oracle Text manually by running catnoctx.sql from the same directory as the installation script.

Search Issues with Oracle Text

If you are experiencing problems with the search operation on PDF documents, make sure that you are not working with password-protected documents or with documents containing custom fonts. To unset the password, open the PDF file, display the File menu, select Document Properties, and click the Security tab. You should have no password assigned, and the Security Method should be set to None. To determine whether custom fonts are used, open the File menu, choose Document Properties, and click the Fonts tab, and see whether the Encoding option is set to Custom; if so, that could be the cause (if the font is not supported). Also, zipped files cannot be searched.

Installation of Oracle Spatial

With the installation of Oracle Enterprise Edition, all Oracle Spatial configuration tasks are completed automatically. For custom installation of Oracle Spatial and Oracle Database together with Enterprise or Standard Edition software, the DBCA will start at the end of installation. For custom installation with the Create New Database option, DBCA will ask you if Oracle Spatial should be configured automatically.

For a separate installation of Oracle Spatial, you must use Database Configuration Assistant and select Configure Database Options in a database or configure Oracle Spatial manually. For manual configuration, log in to the database as SYS using SQLPlus and run ordinst.sql under the ORACLE_HOME/ord/admin directory. Then connect as SYSTEM and run ordinst.sql in the ORACLE_HOME/ord/admin directory. The Spatial option is owned by MDSYS. Use platform-specific guides for more information on these steps.

Operations with Oracle UltraSearch

For manual installation of the UltraSearch option, perform the following steps (refer to MetaLink documents #280713.1 and #283292.1 for more details):

1.	Ensure that Oracle Text and JVM are set up correctly. Switch to the ORACLE_HOME/ ultrasearch/admin directory, depending on your platform of installation (operating system).
2.	Use SQLPlus and log in as SYS with SYSDBA privileges.
3.	Run the wk0install.sql script. It will prompt for a few responses with regard to passwords (including SYS), WKSYS schema owner, temporary tablespace, and the like. If you do not get any errors from running wk0install.sql, then the installation is successful.
4.	Confirm the following object count totals after running wk0install.sql: SQL> select count(*) from dba_objects where owner = 'WKSYS'; SQL> select count(*) from dba_objects where owner = 'WKSYS' and status = 'INVALID';

The second SQL should return a ZERO(0) value.

For de-installing UltraSearch, make sure that the WKSYS user does not have any open sessions, and then run the wk0deinst.sql script from the same directory as wk0install.sql. If there are no errors running the script, you have successfully removed WKSYS.