Develop Reference

Getting started with Oracle Database

I've been assigned the task of making our Java web application work with Oracle Database. I am not sure where to start. I was hoping for an experience similar to working with MySQL or PostgreSQL, but no such luck.
The answer to this question will be list of steps for installing and deploying an Oracle Database for development use, basic operations such as starting and stoping, creating and dropping schemas, and perhaps even JDBC connection parameters.
A little bit of background about my project (although ideally the answer to this question will be as general purpose as possible and not be tied to the specifics of my environment):
Java (and Scala) web apps deployed in Tomcat
Hibernate (currently connected to PostgreSQL and MySQL)
Developer workstations run OS X; production deployments are to Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Firstly, don't think about Oracle on OS X. You'll need Linux (or Windows), maybe on a virtual machine/
Then decide whether you'll be using Oracle 10g or 11g. 10g has a free Express Edition which is relatively easy to install on Linux or Windows. However, if you want 11g or bug fixes to 10g or some of the extra options (compression, partitioning...) you'll need a fully licenced version of Oracle. Depends on your load, but you can have one physical machine which is licenced for Oracle, with multiple VMs (one for each developer).
XE has a single database instance that the installer will configure to start up when you start the machine. If you are just using the VM for the database, having the database startup and shutdown with the machine is the easiest way to go.

I have not found a fundamental difference between MySQL and Oracle from a developer's point of view. It's just tables, joins, and SQL. If your database gets enormous or needs insane throughput then yes, it matters a lot. But by then you'll need a real DBA.
Download SQLDeveloper from Oracle. It is free. It will let you perform database maintenance, run SQL statements interactively, etc.
Read up on "connection pooling" and "oracle". There probably some good threads here on SO. You'll want this as it will make your servets run efficiently.
Read up on JNDI database connections. This is simply a way to specify the database connection in your Tomcat configuration so your applications don't have to know anything about the database. You'll be able to move your war files from test to QA to prod with less difficulty.
Hibernate is the trickiest thing of the bunch! Keep it simple! I highly recommend you reverse engineer your model classes from the database and never manually modify them. You can also generate your DAOs (recommended) but you will modify those.
Use standard proper database design as you'll have to play fewer games with Hibernate. For example, always put a numeric PK on each table, and use an Oracle sequence to populate it. Always use FKs when appropriate. Try to normalize your data to a practical extent.
Use Ant or Maven for your builds. Don't do anything by hand.
Use SVN or similar.
That's the biggies for now.

If your database is relatively lightweight and doesn't heavily rely on Oracle-specific features, I would recommend you to use XE for development. In the other case, it might make more sense to dedicate a separate box for running Oracle for development.
As for the basic steps you mentioned, the later versions of oracle come with a rather nice web-frontend(which looks like that) that can handle all of these maintenance tasks. If you would need something better and more responsive, go for Oracle SQL Developer, which is a desktop application somewhat similar to pgAdmin.
Installation is also much easier with the newer versions of Oracle (10g and up), so you should not have any problems with that.
Edit: On memory optimization (if you insist on having an Oracle instance on your workstation and your database is relatively light), check this thread since it provides a multitude of good hints.

Recommendations for Test Linux/Web Server Environment using Java

I'm a .NET developer looking do some research on my own time to better familiarize myself with Linux and Java (e.g JSP and Servlets).
My plan is to install Linux on an old PC. Then, install and configure a web server capable of hosting JavaServer Pages and Servlets. I would like to create a small web site with dynamic content being pulled from a database. Again, this site is only intended to be used by me for research and testing.
I have very little experience with Linux and Java. Did a couple projects back in college, but that was over 8 years ago.
Below are the questions I have about configuring a test environment I can use for research and testing.
1) What version of Linux should I install on my old PC?
2) What web server should I install on my Linux machine that can be used to host JavaServer Pages and Servlets?
3) What database should I install on the Linux machine? Since I'm doing this for research, it would be nice to test with a DBMS that is commonly used in the real world.
Thanks,
Chris.

You can use Debian, Tomcat and MySQL.
Debian is a fairly common linux distribution and will work on almost every PC.
Tomcat is a simple servlet container. It's the best choice if the only thing you want to do is servlets and JSP.
MySQL is, well MySQL :)
If you do mind using Linux, you can use Ubuntu which is more user-friendly but not really recommended as a server (at least for the default version).
These applications/distributions are from the most used and with the most active communities.
Resources :
debian.org
tomcat.apache.org
mysql.com
ubuntu.com

Whichever you want :-) At work, for example, our Linux servers run Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which is loosely based on Fedora, so that might be a good distribution to use that might be similar to what you would experience in the 'real world'.
Tomcat or JBoss Application Server would be good app servers to start with. Tomcat is just a servlet container, whereas JBoss supports more of the Java EE technologies. That said, many organisations find that a 'lightweight' app server like Tomcat is perfectly adequate.
MySQL and PostgreSQL are both widely-used open source database servers.

I would install the latest Ubuntu. The most user friendly and should work on your old PC.
I would install Glassfish or JBoss. Glassfish comes with Oracle's Java EE and is the easiest to install. JBoss is more widely used in commercial settings. Better yet, install both and try it on both!
MySQL is easy to install on Linux machines. In fact it's usually installed by default by the distribution.
Good luck! Linux is a great learning experience and a lot of fun!

I'm not a specialist in linux distributions, but as webserver the apache tomcat would be the best choice, I think version 6. The database may be a mysql, but for professional usage with more functionality postgresql will be the best choice.

Slackware. You will get lots of different answers on what distribution to use, and a lot of it is personal preference. I always prefer Slackware for server installations, and install all my software from source. I think of Ubuntu and Redhat more as client/desktop installations. I don't like to rely on packages to keep my servers up-to-date.
Tomcat. You don't need J2EE. Tomcat will do the job nicely.
MySQL. It's quite standard and works well.

1) As you want, but I suggest you a Red-Hat (CentOs for example) or Debian (Ubuntu for example) based distribution. With respectively Yum/RPMs and Aptitude/Synaptic, it will be easier to install Java (even if it is not difficult on other distributions).
2) To serve JSP pages and execute servlets, I suggest you Tomcat. It is much easier to install/configure it than other webservers (JBoss, Websphere, Weblogic, etc.), and you won't need them in a first time (EJB, etc.)
3) As a database, you can use MySQL (very easy to install), or PostgreSQL, or Oracle Express Edition (not Open Source but Free... And Oracle is very often used on big projects). From a Java point of view, it will be very similar (JDBC/Hibernate access to database "hide" the specificity of DB)

I think you are starting in the wrong place.
1.
If you want to try out linux try out linux. You don't need to install it - just download a "live CD". I believe the latest Ubuntu installer comes on a live cd.
2.
If you want to try out java web development you don't need to set up a server just install eclipse for java ee and create a dynamic web project. Then just start developing. Try to find some tutorials, etc. Eclipse can even download a development tomcat from within the ide.
3.
For databases - why not just use the same database you use with .net? I am sure there will be a jdbc driver and the code you write shouldn't be that different from any other database.

How to start developing a database application using Oracle + Net Beans

I have thought of creating my first database application for one of my projects using Oracle and Java. I have chosen Netbeans as my development environment. I have a few questions to getting started.
This will be a data intensive (yet still for a college project) database application. I do not need 1000 user concurrency or any other very advanced features but basic stuff such as triggers, stored procedures etc. Will the 11g "Express" (XE) suffice for my requirements?
Do i need any Java to Oracle bridge (database connectivity driver eg. ODBC etc) for Netbeans to connect to the oracle database? If yes, what are they? Does Netbeans support Oracle databases natively?
Any easy to follow guide on how do I connect to the database and insert/retrieve/display data on a J2SE application? (I know that i should Google this but if there's any guide previously followed by anyone and is considered easy, it would be greatly appreciated.)

There are several different ways to access databases using Java. I'm assuming you are wanting to use JDBC, which is included in all recent JDK's. There are other layers on top of JDBC like Hibernate that may make things cleaner for larger applications, but may also be too steep a learning curve if you have a project to complete and submit.
To answer your questions in order:
I think it's highly likely that Oracle 10g Express Edition will do what you need for a college project. It's pretty much the 10g Standard Edition with a 4GB limit on data size.
You will need a JDBC driver to access the database from Java. It comes with XE, and is installed in <XE client install dir>/jdbc/lib/ojdbc14.jar
Sun have an introduction to JDBC here.

Simple database web application with Eclipse and Glassfish

I just started to learning Eclipse with Glassfish server. I was looking around how can I make simple database web application, but can't figure out yet.
I downloaded the Glassfish bundle for Eclipse.
I need to create simple database ( perhaps one table ), and connect the database with simple web application. How to do that in Eclipse , can you give me some step by step link how can I do this
Thank you

For the database you could do worse than use JavaDb, which comes as standard with Java 6. Check out the JDBC tutorial for details on interfacing Java to a database.

If you decide to use Apache Derby as your database, a version of it called JavaDB comes with jee6 + Glassfish bundle, you can read this tutorial about how to connect to it and create tables from within Eclipse. You need to download the Apache Derby plugin.
This has nothing to do with Glassfish, however the example shows you how to connect to it from a normal Java desktop application using JDBC.

This Tip Of The Day seems to have the info you are looking for....

At this point, you have a webapp server and an IDE. Both of which are designed to be semi-agnostic when it comes to databases. The next choice is how you want to interact with the database. Then you should be able to find more information and examples on how to start constructing your webapp.
I'd suggest going with spring and stripes (http://www.springsource.org/ and http://www.stripesframework.org/display/stripes/Home respectively), but that's a personal choice.

Choosing between Firebird and HSQLDB in Java

I want to write a small (5-6 table) desktop app in Java. I want to use Firebird 2.1. database. But I googled and see HSQLDB. I want to make a decision between Firebird and hsqldb.
So which database I have to use?

Firebird runs in a process of its own and your java app needs to communicate with it. The advantage HSQLDB has that it is written in java, and can run in the same process, which simplifies your installation and runtime check ups (Is the db running, connection errors, etc.). It can persist the data to the disk as well. AN additional option is the H2 database db, which also can run in process.
I'd go with the HSQLDB or H2.

For a desktop application an embedded database should be enough. hsqldb or h2 are very well suited for this. You just have to add the JAR file to you applications classpath. Firebird looks more complex.
Actually, H2 is more advanced than hsqldb.

Firebird is very good embedded database and just win an award at SouceForge this year
SQLite have good press for embedded Database too.

I recomend HSQLDB because it's implemented in Java (so you have the same platform as the application) and I guess that you don't need any of the feature for the project of that size that could FireBird provide.

Don't forget that Java 6 comes with JavaDB, and that may be a useful implementation for a first solution. It's a repackaged Apache Derby, and consequently quite powerful.