Compiling Multiple versions of DBD::Oracle

I am sorry if this is covered somewhere that I have been unable to find
it. I have not been able to connect to the FAQ at
http://dev.isystek.com/dbi/fom.cgi. The only faq's I have found on-line
are dated CY2000, and do not appear to address this issue.

I am a UNIX admin, supporting a large Solaris Environment.

I need to compile a set of DBI/DBD::Oracle modules such that they are able
to access several different versions of Oracle databases, not all of which
might exist locally on each machine.

I originally assumed that compiling DBD::Oracle under the 'highest
revision' oracle environment would be backward compatible, but the
README.client seems to suggest that the ORACLE_HOME of the perl program's
environment should be the same as what was used at DBD::Oracle Compile
time.

This tends to suggest that I need a different DBD::Oracle for each Oracle
Revision, however there does not seem to be a mechanism within DBI to
specify *which* DBD::Oracle driver to use.

A previous email in this list said there was a connectivity matrix, but
did not give a reference to where that exists. (ref:
http://www.mail-archive.com/dbi-users@xxxxxxxx/msg23511.html) This tends
to suggest that I might find one version that is 'most likely' to work
across different versions.

Or am I completely wrong-headed, and setting ORACLE_HOME and
LD_LIBRARY_PATH allow the correct Oracle libraries to be found
irrespective of the environment in which DBD::Oracle was compiled?)

I am looking for the proper solution, not one that I might get to work
now, but must re-architect for the next Oracle version installed. What is
the way that DBI/DBD::Oracle should be configured when multiple Oracle
versions are involved?

To further complicate things, I am working under the restriction that I
may not have a C compiler in my production environments, so the solution
needs to be able to be built in development, then promoted to a c-less
production environment.

The Versions I am using:
Perl 5.8.0
DBI DBI-1.48
DBD::Oracle DBD-Oracle-1.16
Oracle 8.1.7.[3,4] 9.2.0.[3,4,6] 10.1.0.2 (etc)
GCC 2.95.3 20010315

Thanks for your attention
jk

.

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