Preface

This guide provides introductory information for the Oracle Call Interface running under the Microsoft for Windows NT and Windows 95/98. Specific topics discussed in this preface are:

Prerequisites

This guide assumes that you are familiar with:

How to compile and link a C program.
Your Microsoft for Windows NT and Windows 95/98 operating system.

Intended Audience

This guide is necessary for anyone who wants to use the Oracle Call Interface under the Microsoft for Windows NT and Windows 95/98 operating system.

How This Guide Is Organized

This guide is organized as follows:

Chapter 1, "Introducing the Oracle Call Interface"

Provides introductory information to help you get started with the Oracle Call Interface.

Chapter 2, "Building OCI Applications"

Provides an overview of how to build Oracle database applications using OCI.

Conventions

The following conventions are used in this guide.

Convention Example Meaning

All uppercase plain

ORANT\DATABASE\INITORCL.ORA

Indicates command names, SQL reserved words, and keywords, as in ALTER DATABASE. All uppercase plain is also used for directory names and file names

Italic

Italic used to indicate a variable:
CFILE="C:\ORACLE_HOME\filename\"
Italic used for emphasis:
The WHERE clause may be used to join rows in different tables.

Indicates a value that you must provide. For example, if a command asks you to type filename, you must type the actual name of the file.
Italic is also used for emphasis in the text and to indicate the titles of other guides.

Oracle database

The database component of Oracle8.

C:\>

C:\ORANT\DATABASE>

Represents the Windows NT or Windows 95 command prompt of the current hard disk drive. Your prompt may differ and may, at times, reflect the subdirectory in which you are working. Referred to as the MS-DOS command prompt in this guide.

Backslash (\) before a directory name

\DATABASE

Indicates that the directory is a subdirectory of the root directory.

Oracle home

Go to the ORACLE_HOME\DATABASE directory.

Oracle home is represented as the hard drive letter and the top level directory where your Oracle software is installed. In this guide, the convention ORACLE_HOME is used to indicate your Oracle home directory, which may be:
C:\ORANT for Windows NT
C:\ORAWIN95 for Windows 95
C:\ORAWIN98 for Windows 98
or whatever you may have called your Oracle home.

HOMEID

HOME0, HOME1, HOME2

Represents a unique registry subkey for each Oracle home directory in which you install products. A new HOMEID is created and incremented each time you install products to a different Oracle home directory on one machine. Each HOMEID contains its own configuration parameter settings for installed Oracle products.

Symbols

period .
comma ,
hyphen -
semicolon ;
colon :
equal sign =
backslash \
single quote `
double quote "
parentheses ()

Symbols other than brackets and vertical bars must be entered in commands exactly as shown.

Convention	Example	Meaning
All uppercase plain	ORANT\DATABASE\INITORCL.ORA	Indicates command names, SQL reserved words, and keywords, as in ALTER DATABASE. All uppercase plain is also used for directory names and file names
Italic	Italic used to indicate a variable: CFILE="C:\ORACLE_HOME\filename\" Italic used for emphasis: The WHERE clause may be used to join rows in different tables.	Indicates a value that you must provide. For example, if a command asks you to type filename, you must type the actual name of the file. Italic is also used for emphasis in the text and to indicate the titles of other guides.
Oracle database		The database component of Oracle8.
C:\>	C:\ORANT\DATABASE>	Represents the Windows NT or Windows 95 command prompt of the current hard disk drive. Your prompt may differ and may, at times, reflect the subdirectory in which you are working. Referred to as the MS-DOS command prompt in this guide.
Backslash (\) before a directory name	\DATABASE	Indicates that the directory is a subdirectory of the root directory.
Oracle home	Go to the ORACLE_HOME\DATABASE directory.	Oracle home is represented as the hard drive letter and the top level directory where your Oracle software is installed. In this guide, the convention ORACLE_HOME is used to indicate your Oracle home directory, which may be: C:\ORANT for Windows NT C:\ORAWIN95 for Windows 95 C:\ORAWIN98 for Windows 98 or whatever you may have called your Oracle home.
HOMEID	HOME0, HOME1, HOME2	Represents a unique registry subkey for each Oracle home directory in which you install products. A new HOMEID is created and incremented each time you install products to a different Oracle home directory on one machine. Each HOMEID contains its own configuration parameter settings for installed Oracle products.
Symbols	period . comma , hyphen - semicolon ; colon : equal sign = backslash \ single quote ` double quote " parentheses ()	Symbols other than brackets and vertical bars must be entered in commands exactly as shown.

Documentation Library

This guide is part of a larger library of Oracle documentation. The Oracle documentation library consists of two types of documentation:

Documentation Type Describes...

Operating System-specific

Installation, configuration, and use of Oracle products in a for Windows NT and Windows 95/98 environment. Operating system-specific documents are occasionally referred to in the generic documentation set. These documents are easy to identify because they always mention their specific operating system in their title.

Generic

Oracle database, Oracle networking, and Application Programming Interfaces information that is uniform across all operating system platforms. The majority of documents in your documentation set belong to this category. While reading through the generic documentation set, you are occasionally asked to refer to your platform (or operating system) documentation for procedures specific to the for Windows NT and Windows 95/98 operating systems.
To easily identify where these generic documentation references are described in your operating system documentation, see the index of this guide for the following entry:
generic documentation references
All generic documentation references described in this guide appear under this index entry.