Try to use Perl 5.8.8 but Oracle 10g installed Perl 5.8.3

PerlSearcher has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi Respect Monks,

My goal is to use Perl as much as possible for my application development(on Windows platform), which involve Oracle database as part of my tech stack.

However, I found:
---With the installation of Oracle 10g installed on my Windows XP, by default, it installed ActiveState Perl 5.8.3 on my machine. It sets two environment variables PATH, and PERL5LIB.
---For my Perl programming, I have two options:
   a. Using Perl 5.8.3 coming with the Oracle DB installation.
   b. Using the newest Perl 5.8.8.

   However, option B gave me a lot of trouble.
   1. In order to user Perl 5.8.8, I have manipulate PATH and PERL5LIB environment variables before launch the script.
   2. The worst thing is that the IIS server (for running CGI programs) only gets path and perl5lib info from system.
   3. BTW, as I know, if I change the PATH and PERL5LIB setting done by Oracle 10g installation, Oracle DB's HTTP server won't work and possible other troubles.

So, as of now, it seems my only option is to use Perl 5.8.3 for my Perl programming and development. Please let me know if you have better idea/insight.

I installed ActiveState Perl 5.8.3 on my machine, as I don't want to messy up Oracle DB's Perl installation. I am fine with not able to have GUI PPM4 in Perl 5.8.3 and have to use command line PPM.

But, my biggest problem is that I found the repositories configured with Perl 5.8.3 installation are not working. The followings are the locations of the two repositories:
1 ActiveState PPM2 Repository
Location: http://ppm.ActiveState.com/cgibin/PPM/ppmserver-5.8-windows.pl?urn:/PPMServer
2 ActiveState Package Repository
Location: http://ppm.ActiveState.com/PPM/ppmserver-5.8-windows.plex?urn:/PPM/Server/SQL

For both of them, the system gave error of "Warning: 500 Can't connect to ppm.ActiveState.com:80 (connect: Unknown error)"

It would be really appreciated if I could get help on:

(1) If I would like to use Perl 5.8.8 for my Perl development, how can I solve the issue of IIS reading path and library of Perl 5.8.3 installed by Oracle DB?
(2) How can I make PPM of Perl 5.8.3 by connecting to a correct repository? I can use the repository locations used by PPM4 (used by Perl 5.8.8), which are located at:
http://ppm4.activestate.com/MSWin32-x86/5.8/819/
http://ppm4.activestate.com/MSWin32-x86/5.8/820/package.xml

Thanks a lot.
PerlSearcher

Comment on Try to use Perl 5.8.8 but Oracle 10g installed Perl 5.8.3

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
(OT) Re: Try to use Perl 5.8.8 but Oracle 10g installed Perl 5.8.3 by Argel (Prior) on Jul 17, 2007 at 23:53 UTC
WARNING: Playing around like this could really hose up your system. IIS actually runs under the local SYSTEM account. You might be able to remove the system level environment variables and add them to the user environment variables for the SYSTEM account instead. Under Windows XP the registry key is: HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-18\Environment You might also have to change the account web users run under (last time I used ISS, which was several years ago, it was IUSR_<machine_name>). WARNING: Changes to the registry can be very dangerous! For that reason I intentionlly left out "hand-holding" information. If any of this seems vague or confusing you should just forget you ever read this post! Updates: Changed the second warning message and added mention of the web user account.	[reply]
Re: Try to use Perl 5.8.8 but Oracle 10g installed Perl 5.8.3 by syphilis (Archbishop) on Jul 18, 2007 at 04:01 UTC
(2) How can I make PPM of Perl 5.8.3 by connecting to a correct repository? I think the 2 repository addresses that 5.8.3 is using are correct. The first one, at least, works fine for me (using the PPM version that's currently on CPAN) - so I suspect that the problem you're having with 5.8.3's PPM lies with PPM itself, and not with the addresses it uses. Are there firewall/proxy issues ? See your perl/html/faq/ActivePerl-faq2.html for how to deal with firewalls and proxies. Or perhaps Oracle is doing something that interferes with PPM's capacity to work properly. ActiveState host a PPM mailing list if you get stuck. Cheers, Rob	[reply]
Re^2: Try to use Perl 5.8.8 but Oracle 10g installed Perl 5.8.3 by PerlSearcher (Novice) on Jul 18, 2007 at 07:49 UTC
Thanks Rob. Based on your hint, I found the problem and fixed. Post my solution here for sharing. Cause: firewall/proxy issue Fix: Read http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePerl/5.8/faq/ActivePerl-faq2.html Especially, this part: you must include "http://" BTW, I found that I could use the newest repository URL http://ppm4.activestate.com/MSWin32-x86/5.8/820/ (come with Perl 5.8.8) for my Perl 5.8.3. Thanks PerlSearcher	[reply]