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Connecting Go to Oracle database

Posted on 2 mins read

Connecting Go to Oracle gives a bit more work than other databases. This is because the Oracle drivers not just link to C code, but also depend on specific environment settings. This post was first written with Windows in mind, but I added a section with Linux specific instructions below. This was tested with the following drivers:

First, remember, you will need the 32-bits version of everything (This works on 64-bits Windows, though). This is because some of the tools you will need are available just as 32-bits for Windows. So, first thing, check if the Go version you have is 32-bits.

Second, you will need to install the oficial MinGW package (again, 32-bits). Don’t forget to add the /bin folder inside the MinGW installation to the PATH.

Now, create a folder called C:\pkg-config, and extract these three ZIP files inside:

Now download the Oracle client (32-bits) and put it on C:\instantclient_11_2. Also download the Oracle SDK (32-bits) and put on C:\instantclient_11_2\sdk. C:\instantclient_11_2 should be added to your PATH.

Now create a folder C:\pkg-config\PKG_CONFIG_PATH, and create a file called oci8.pc inside with the following content:

prefix=/devel/target/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
exec_prefix=${prefix}
libdir=C:/instantclient_11_2/sdk/lib/msvc
includedir=C:/instantclient_11_2/sdk/include

glib_genmarshal=glib-genmarshal
gobject_query=gobject-query
glib_mkenums=glib-mkenums

Name: oci8
Version: 11.2
Description: oci8 library
Libs: -L${libdir} -loci
Cflags: -I${includedir}

Add C:\pkg-config\bin to PATH and C:\pkg-config\PKG_CONFIG_PATH to a environment variable called PKG_CONFIG_PATH.

Restart any command prompt to make sure the new environment variables were reconized. If everything is OK, you should be able to properly install one of the Oracle packages:

go install -v github.com/rana/ora
# or
go install -v github.com/mattn/go-oci8

On Linux

This was tested on Ubuntu 16.04, x64 version. First, make sure you installed these tools:

sudo apt-get install build-essential pkg-config

For installing Oracle Client + SDK on Ubuntu, please carefully read and follow this guide on the oficial Ubuntu Wiki. This post won’t cover the SDK installation because it’s very well covered there.

Once you did the installation, create a folder called PKG_CONFIG_PATH in a place you remember later, and then a environment variable called PKG_CONFIG_PATH pointing to this folder. Then, create a file called oci8.pc with the following template (instead of the above for Windows):

prefix=/devel/target/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
exec_prefix=${prefix}
libdir=/usr/lib/oracle/11.2/client64/lib
includedir=/usr/include/oracle/11.2/client64

glib_genmarshal=glib-genmarshal
gobject_query=gobject-query
glib_mkenums=glib-mkenums

Name: oci8
Description: oci8 library
Libs: -L${libdir} -lclntsh
Cflags: -I${includedir}
Version: 11.2

And try compile to see if everything is OK:

go install -v github.com/mattn/go-oci8
# or
go install -v github.com/rana/ora