Public website connetion to private Oracle DB server

Krik

Well this is an little bit out of the ordinary for web design.

A friend of mine has been approached to potential redo a website. Occasionally I help him out when they get really in depth. And this one goes well beyond the typical web site.

Apparently they keep most of their user info and data on a local Oracle database and do to the nature of the data that is likely a good idea. But they make some of it available to users (upon login) via a website hosted (by another company) on a separate server.

Is php capable of accessing that local Oracle database. I know php can access an oracle database but how about one stored on a private server.

Now just form my past of having done some server administration I gave him a few more questions to ask. But do to my inexperience of working with Oracle and in particular one stored on a private server I thought it best to turn to others who may know more.

First is there any good resources on doing this?

And second what question do we need to ask before even agreeing to take on the project?

Krik

I am guessing either I didn't explain very well or there just isn't a whole lot of people that have done this.

If anyone has anything that could help it would be great even if it is book I have to buy or some insanely long document that is half incomprehensible. Just need a place to start.

BryanJ

Have you tried to connect it like you would connect to any other database? Just instead of putting localhost as the host of the database, put the ip or url of the host there.

Krik

This isn't an actual project I have in hand yet. They know they want to change how it all works currently but just haven't given the go ahead.

What you suggested may or may not work. The data on this server is in part data that has been intentionally kept away from prying eyes. As such I suspect it will be a bit harder than just entering an IP address username and password to get at the data. While it is possible that could be all that is needed, if it isn't I am going to need something more than a best guess to figure it out.

I have had to in the past write scripts to be run on one server that accessed data on separate server. And to do that I had to tell the server with the data to let the other server have access. Now fortunately both those servers were web hosting serves that were setup to allow that. In this case it is a private server that may or may not have such an option. And if it does or doesn't I am not even sure what question I need ask them to find out either way. And then if it doesn't what setting(s) may need to be changed or software may need to be installed?

I am hoping someone has a resource they can point me to so I don't go into this blind. Whether it is a book or an online document or tutorial, it doesn't matter. Just hoping someone knows a bit more about it.

foyer

What is the definition of "private server"? As long as web services are running on and the router that controls the network properly routes traffic and it has a dedicated IP or DNS host name. That's a start anyway.