Page 1 Oracle via SSH (on line database classes only) The CS2 Oracle Database (Oracle 9i) is located on a Windows 2000 server named mercury. Students enrolled in on line database classes may access this Oracle server using an SSH client. Users will be able to: -connect to an SSH server (mercury) hosting an Oracle databse (cs2) using an SSH client which may be downloaded from the CSE Lab Web Page -run Oracle SQLplus and issue SQL commands. -create Oracle scripts using an editor similar to the DOS editor -execute Oracle scripts -capture output from SQL commands to text files in a home folder on mercury -download files from a mercury home folder to a client PC Uploads from client PC's to mercury are not enabled for security reasons. Setting up the SSH Client on your local PC An SSH client is required to access the SSH server on mercury. If you are using a windows PC, download the file "WACssh.exe" from http://cse.spsu.edu/downloads/. Create a folder on your PC that you will use to store files for your database class and place the WACssh.exe file there. No installation is required to run the WACssh client from this executable. You can use other SSH2 clients (putty, etc) to access mercury and execute SQL commands. If you want to use an editor to create scripts or want to transfer files from mercury to your local PC, you will need to use the WACssh client. User Accounts required to access Oracle Please read this carefully as the requirement for multiple user accounts has proven to be confusing to many users. You will require two sets of credentials to use Oracle. A CSE2 lab account is required to logon to the SSH server on mercury. You must connect to the mercury server using an SSH client before connecting to the CS2 Oracle database. CSE2 Lab accounts are created for all students registered in courses offered by the SPSU School of Computing and Software Engineering. If you have not used your CSE2 lab account before, see the CSE Lab New Account Handout for information. Oracle accounts for students in on line database classes will be created by CSE Lab staff. Your Oracle UserID will be identical to your CSE Lab Account user id. Your Oracle password, however will initially be different from your CSE Lab account password. All Oracle account passwords are initially set to temp00. Opening an SSH session on mercury If you have access to an ISP at an off campus location, you may use SSH to connect to mercury. To open a SSH session on a Windows client, start your ISP service. Then open a command prompt window on your local PC. ( In windows 98 look for the MSDos icon on your start menu. In windows 2000, open the run menu window and enter cmd ). After doing so, change to the folder in which you installed WACSSH.exe. At the command prompt, enter WACSSH.exe to run the SSH client. Your Windows PC should open a window and prompt you to enter "Host Name or IP address: Type 168.28.178.86 at this prompt and press Enter.
Page 2 Next, you will be prompted to supply a user name and password. Enter your CSE2 Lab Account userid and password here, then press enter. If your connection is successful, you will receive a prompt from the mercury server similar the one in the following figure. The D:\USERS> prompt indicates that you are connected to a directory on the mercury windows server. Each user account will have a home folder that is a subdirectory of of D:\USERS. For reasons that will become clear later, you should always execute commands from your home folder. Before proceeding any farther, you should change to your home folder with the command " cd myuserid " where "myuserid" is your cse2 userid. After doing so, the prompt will change to something like D:\USERS\myuserid > The SSH window is similar to the command prompt window that you opened initially on your local computer. You can navigate the mercury file system and administer files in your home folder using a subset of familiar DOS commands ( including more, copy, del, mkdir, cd, dir, etc.). If you are not familiar with DOS commands, use a search engine to locate a DOS tutorial on the web. If you are using a dial up connection, there may be noticeable delay in the terminal response to your keystrokes. The delay will vary depending on the speed of your connection. You may need to slow your typing speed to avoid problems with buffering your keystrokes. Also try to avoid unnecessary commands that generate large amounts of output.
Page 3 Accessing Oracle from mercury After logging in to mercury, you will use your Oracle Account to access the CS2 Oracle database. Oracle Accounts for students enrolled in online database classes will be created at the request of your instructor. Your Oracle Account Userid will be identical to your CSE lab user id. Your Oracle Account password will be different and is initially be set to temp00.. First be sure that you are located at the " D:\USERS\myuserid > " (where myuserid represents your own userid) prompt on mercury. If you are not, use the cd command to change to your home folder, then enter " plus80 " to start Oracle SQLplus. If all goes well you should be greeted by a message similar to the following: SQL*Plus: Release 8.0.5.0.0 - Production on Mon Oct 2 13:20:36 2000 (c) Copyright 1998 Oracle Corporation. All rights reserved. Enter user-name: At the " Enter user-name " prompt, type ' userid/password@cs2 ' where userid and password are your Oracle account userid and password. (Your Oracle password will not be masked when it is entered here, so you might want to be sure that no one is looking over your shoulder before entering it.). If successful you should receive an Oracle SQLPlus prompt similar to the following. Here s how a user named scott whose password is tiger would logon: Executing an SQL command in SQLplus; The CS2 oracle database has a demonstration user with userid " SCOTT ". All users can execute select statements against tables owned by SCOTT. You can recall information from a table named " dept " that was created by SCOTT by entering "select * from scott.dept;" at the SQL> prompt (all SQL commands in Oracle end with a ; ). The output should be similar to the following: If you want to try some additional commands, see the handout Oracle SQLPlus orientation at http://cs.spsu.edu/cslab/reference/oracle/default.htm.
Page 4 Changing your Oracle password Everyone s default Oracle password is temp00, so you will want to change it after your first log in. To change your Oracle password, login to Oracle using your own userid, then issue the following command from the SQL> prompt: GRANT CONNECT TO username IDENTIFIED BY password; (where username is the user id you have been assigned and password is a new password of your choice. Oracle passwords are case sensitive, must begin with a letter, and can not contain dashes or punctuation marks) Using the WAC Editor in Oracle SQLplus Later, you will be executing complex SQL commands and may wish to execute them from a script. Scripts are text files containing SQL commands that can be executed from the SQL> prompt. If you use the WACSSH.exe client to connect to mercury, you can open a DOS editor in Oracle SQLPlus to create scripts for SQL commands. If you are unfamiliar with DOS editor, use your browser to search for a tutorial on DOS editor. To demonstrate, we will create a script named temp.sql using the DOS editor. Begin by entering the command " edit temp.sql " at the SQL> prompt' A DOS editor window will open. Enter the following SQL command exactly as shown. Including the / on line 2. Hold down the <alt> key and press "F" to open the editor File menu, then press " S" to save temp.sql to your home folder on mercury.
Page 5 Open the File menu again, then press X to close the editor and return to the SQL> prompt. The editor menu is normally manipulated by using the <altl> key in combination with an alpha key. The File context menu has choices which allow you to save your file or close the editor, etc. Files saved in the editor will be located in your home folder if you remembered to change to the that folder before starting SQLplus with the plus80 command. If you did not change to your home folder before starting SQLplus, you must exit SQLplus, change to your home folder, then log in again to save your file in the proper location. Use "<alt> H" to open the Editor Help menu to list other menu options. Executing a script within SQLplus. Remember that you saved the script you created in your home folder on mercury. To execute the script you just created, enter the following command at the SQL> prompt: " start D:USERS\myuserid\temp.sql " (where myuserid is the name of your home folder). You should receive output similar to the following When you are finished with Oracle, you can exit SQLplus and return to the mercury prompt by issuing the command exit. Capturing Oracle output Your instructor may require you to submit copies of output generated by Oracle commands and scripts. You can use the capture capabilities of Oracle SQLplus to write output of Oracle commands and scripts to a text file. Here is a demonstration : 1. Start Oracle SQL plus from your home folder on mercury and login to Oracle 2. A t the SQL> prompt, start the capture with the command SPOOL myout01.txt ; (where myout01.text is a file name of your own choosing) 3.Execute SQL command(s) or a script. 4. Stop the capture with the command SPOOL off ;
Page 6 The output generated by Oracle commands issued between the two SPOOL commands will be captured and written to a text file named myout01.txt. The file will be located in your home folder on the mercury server. To verify this, exit Oracle SQL with the exit command, then user dir to list files in our mercury home folder. To view the content of myout.01.text, issue the dos command more myout01.txt. Transferring files from mercury to your local PC Your instructor may require you to submit copies of Oracle scripts or output files you create on mercury. You can download copies of these files to your local PC using the following method: 1. Connect to mercury and cd to your home folder 2. Use the WAC sendfile command to transfer a copy of the desired file to your home PC. You must include the full path in your command as indicated in the following example. Remember that the transferred file will be saved to the folder that you started WACSSH.exe from on your PC. In the following example, a user is sending a file named myscript.sql from the mercury server to the client PC. The file will be saved in the folder from which the wacssh.exe client was started.
Page 7 Ending your Oracle and SSH sessions Issue the exit command from the SQL> prompt to end your Oracle session and return to the mercury command prompt. Then issue another exit command from the mercury prompt to close your SSH session.