It’s annoying how much harder this is than the MySQL driver…

1. Download these RPMs from Oracle’s Instant Client for Linux page:Instant Client Package – Basic: All files required to run OCI, OCCI, and JDBC-OCI applications Instant Client Package – SDK: Additional header files and an example makefile for developing Oracle applications with Instant Client [just for future fun] Instant Client Package – ODBC: Additional libraries for enabling ODBC applications
2. Installify them,

   $ sudo rpm -ivh oracle-instantclient-*.rpm

3. Get DBD::Oracle

   sudo cpan

   cpan> look DBD::Oracle

4. Look at README.linux.txt
5. Set up the environment

   export ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/11.1.0.1/client/lib
   export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME
   export LIBPATH=$ORACLE_HOME
   
   export ORACLE_DSN="DBI:Oracle:host=myhost;sid=MYINSTANCE"  # remember to quote the ;
   export ORACLE_USERID=myusername/mypassword

6. I had to patch the Makefile.PL (sent changes to the maintainer) to find the header files with a longer “client_version_full”:

   # diff -u Makefile.PL Makefile.PL.dist
   --- Makefile.PL 2008-07-31 10:53:00.253634000 -0800
   +++ Makefile.PL.dist    2008-07-31 10:51:49.327631000 -0800
   @@ -1538,7 +1538,7 @@
        if (!$client_version_full) {
           print "I'm having trouble finding your Oracle version number... trying harder\n"
               unless $force_version;
   -       if ( $OH =~ m![^\d\.]((?:8|9|1\d)\.\d+\.\d+<strong>(\.\d+)?</strong>)! ) { #decode it from $OH if possible
   +       if ( $OH =~ m![^\d\.]((?:8|9|1\d)\.\d+\.\d+)! ) { #decode it from $OH if possible
               $client_version_full = $1;
           }
           elsif ( "$OH/" =~ m!\D(8|9|10)(\d)(\d?)\D!) { # scary but handy

7. Install normally:

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make test # a few minor failures
   make install