October 2009 - Posts
A few days ago I was surfing through the forums on DotNetNuke.com and came across a post asking if you could run DotNetNuke on an Oracle database.
In short, yes you can. But why would you? This blog post will talk about that, and some of the reasons why I would never recommend that you use DotNetNuke on Oracle. (No offense intended to anyone who provides Oracle support for DNN, this is simply my personal opinion)
DotNetNuke is built with a provider model, what does that mean? It basically means that you can swap out functionality fairly easily. One of those providers is the database layer of the platform. DotNetNuke is built to run out of the box on Microsoft’s SQL Server, but there are other providers out there such as one for Oracle databases from a company called Acuiti Solutions.
Plugging in a data provider for Oracle will basically allow you to configure DotNetNuke to run on Oracle, bypassing the requirement for Microsoft’s SQL Server. Sometimes this is a business requirement, based on licensing concerns within an organization, sometimes it’s just a preference for people to stick with a database that they already know and love.
While I haven’t setup DNN to run on Oracle, it should be a fairly straightforward process, setup the database, setup the connection information, change the provider settings in the web.config, boom you’re done (maybe, like I said, I’ve never done it).
What now? Well, I imagine you go about installing DNN as you normally would, the difference being that it’s all setup on Oracle, instead of SQL Server. So you install, login, and start creating some pages. But you realize you need some custom functionality, so you look for a DotNetNuke Module to provide that functionality, perhaps it is one of the Core modules from the DNN project, then you are likely in luck as it looks like Acuiti provides you the required dataproviders for a lot of the core modules to interact with Oracle.
But what if you want to use a module from another vendor? Chances are that every one module out there written for DNN will NOT work with Oracle out of the box, not at least until you get an Oracle dataprovider for that module, and there in lies the catch to this whole idea. For each new module you want to use on your DotNetNuke install you will need to get an Oracle data provider, you are not likely to find that existing already so you will have to develop it yourself, or pay someone else to develop it. That will potentially increase your costs dramatically!
So, in short, you can use DotNetNuke on an Oracle database, but i wouldn’t encourage any of my customers to go down that route.
On a somewhat related note, just because you install DNN on a Microsoft SQL Server database doesn’t mean that all your modules must interact with MS SQL, you could easily write your own module that uses it’s own connection string and connects to an existing Oracle database somewhere to provide content and functionality from other business solutions. The provider model for DNN can be used to do this, or you could bypass the provider model and simply develop your custom module to talk to Oracle without the use of a provider.
So I was talking to David Silverlight down in Miami Florida earlier this evening and he started asking me about blogging. I had to lead him towards the path of enlightenment (Windows Live Writer) as he was complaining that he completely lost the blog post he had just written. Once we got that squared away David got to posting.
So there are a couple of announcements from David’s blog post.
1. David Silverlight has started a new blog, Silverlight on Silverlight If you are interested in learning more about the application from the man it was named after check out the blog!
2. The even cooler thing though is information he has about the new Microsoft Store opening up in Mission Viejo on Thursday the 29th. If you have been under a rock lately you may have missed that Microsoft Opened up a store in Scottsdale, AZ last week in coordination with the Windows 7 launch, and now they are opening up another one.
I am excited to get to go to a Microsoft Store myself as I am sick of seeing all the Apple stores in the malls these days! I really wanted to walk into the local Apple store when I was at the mall with my wife today and yell “You guys should all go buy Windows 7”, but I refrained from doing so. I am planning on going to the Scottsdale Microsoft Store while we are down in Tucson visiting my parents for the Holidays.
If you are in SoCal head over to The Shops at Mission Viejo to check it out! You can also “maybe” get some invitation only perks by emailing David! Be sure to check out his blog post for info on that.
If a reader wants to send me the goody bag they receive from the store opening I’ll send you a signed copy of my book, DotNetNuke 5: A User’s Guide.
One of the biggest complaints about DotNetNuke, is, and always has been, the lack of documentation. I’ve been trying to help correct that problem for a while now. A year ago I started writing a book that was Published in June, DotNetNuke 5: A User’s Guide, I think it turned out to be a good resource for people looking to learn how to setup and use DNN to build a website.
The book however can’t cover everything about DNN, and wasn’t intended too. There are a number of other books out there for DNN, they all provide good resources as well, but people still want something more, something electronic, as a resource for documentation.
A few months ago (I can’t believe how time flies, I started this back in June or July I think) I started putting together a new project to try and tackle the DNN Documentation problem. I would like to introduce DotNetNukeDocs.com. What? Someone setup ANOTHER wiki project to try and document DNN? Yes, yes I did, but let me tell you why I think this project is different.
First off, I’m the project leader for the DotNetNuke Wiki module, and have been for a number of years. I’ve always had a problem with the Wiki module, I never really had anywhere to use it besides some documentation for our products at Engage. Unfortunately because of this lack of usage I haven’t done much with the Wiki module over the years, releases have been slacking, and features have been lacking. I figured out that every DNN Module project leader should have a direct need for their module, and I’ve come up with that need. DotNetNukeDocs.com has caused me to make quite a few changes to the Wiki module over the past few months, and right now that module is just waiting to be passed through the review process and become an official release, version 04.02.00.
Oliver Hine and I have been trying to brain dump what we can about DNN into the DNNDocs website to start building up content. We haven’t put as much information as we would like to in there, but I think the site is starting to come along, and in order for it to continue growing I’m opening it up to the world. If you have information about DotNetNuke that you would like to put into the DotNetNuke Documentation Wiki please do! Get Registered on the website, once you do that I’ll add you to the contributors roll and you can start working on content. We do have a few rules (subject to change) that I would suggest reading before you submit your content.
Future plans for the site include some additional tracking modules to provide stats of who provides the most information into the Wiki, in return for this providing links back to those contributor’s websites, link love at it’s finest. I will also be adding more features to the Wiki module over the next few months to help solidify that module as a great solution for DNN Wikis, right now it definitely lacks some much needed features.
Stay tuned as we build up what I hope becomes a great resource for DotNetNuke Documentation, if you have any questions please let me know!
-Chris Hammond
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