Oracle and ListManager (Windows)

Preparing the ListManager Server

Before installing ListManager, you’ll need to install the Oracle Client Tools (or Basic Client Software) on the machine which will be running ListManager. Then, you’ll create a user and password to be used by ListManager. When you’re done, you’re ready to install ListManager.

1. Install the Oracle Client Tools on the machine which will be running ListManager.

2. Run the Configuration Assistant:

 1. Select “Local Net Service Name configuration, and select Next.

 2. Select “Add” when asked what access you’d like to set up.

 3. Select “Oracle9 database or service” when asked what version of Oracle database to access.

 4. Enter the Service Name.

 5. Select TCP.

 6. Enter in additional information as required by your network protocol.

 7. Perform a test of your connectivity.

 8. Select a Net Service Name.

3. Open SQL*PLUS, and log on as system.

4. Enter the following lines:

create user username identified by password default tablespace users quota unlimited on users;

grant connect, resource to username;

The DBA will need to know the common permissions required for Oracle users. The previous is an example only. You may use any username or a different tablespace if desired.

You’re ready to install ListManager! Be sure you select the installer that matches the version of client tools you've installed.

Changing the Character Set of your Oracle Instance

Oracle servers, by default, do not install with a character set that allows 8-bit ASCII characters to be represented correctly. Any high ASCII characters (greater than 127) are translated into other characters. This can cause a problem if you expect that any mail flowing through ListManager will use special accent characters, such as ÿ or á. If your server has this problem, ListManager will give you one of these errors when starting it in the foreground:

Your database is not configured to store all data exactly as it was
sent. This will cause some messages, especially those in foreign
languages, to be incorrectly saved. It is recommended that you change
your database configuration to ensure that this is not a problem.

Your database and/or client configuration will cause problems, as
errors were generated when special characters (such as used by foreign
languages) were sent and/or retrieved from the database. This will
VERY LIKELY CAUSE ERRORS and should be corrected before continuing.

To solve this problem, create your Oracle instance with an 8-bit ASCII character set. If you don't have a preference, we recommend you use:
 

WE8ISO8859P1

This character set appears to also be the one used by Windows as its default, so if both client and server are set to use the same character set, you need not worry about characters being translated.

However, if you choose a different character set, the data will be translated into the client character set, which will almost certainly cause problems. The client character set can be configured using an environmental variable called NLS_LANG. The syntax of the variable is <language>_<country>.<char set>, such as
 

American_America.US8PC437

Database Server Password Security

As the database password is saved unencrypted in a file (lmcfg.txt), you may later remove the password saved in this file and then specify that the password be provided on startup by altering this file.

Setting the Environment Variable for Windows

1. In the Control Panel, open System. Select the "Advanced" tab.

2. Select Environment Variables
3. In the System Properties for Environment Variables, assign "NLS_LANG" to "American_America.US8PC437".