# oci_pconnect

(PHP 5, PECL oci8:1.1-1.2.4)

oci_pconnect — Connect to an Oracle database using a persistent connection

### Description

resource oci_pconnect ( string `$username` , string `$password` [, string `$db` [, string `$charset` [, int `$session_mode` ]]] )

Creates a persistent connection to an Oracle server and logs on.

Persistent connections are cached and re-used between requests, resulting in reduced overhead on each page load; a typical PHP application will have a single persistent connection open against an Oracle server per Apache child process (or PHP FastCGI/CGI process). See the Persistent Database Connections section for more information.

### Parameters

`username`

  The Oracle user name.

`password`

  The password for `username` .

`db`

  This optional parameter can either contain the name of the local Oracle instance or the name of the entry in tnsnames.ora.

  If the not specified, PHP uses environment variables ORACLE_SID and TWO_TASK to determine the name of local Oracle instance and location of tnsnames.ora accordingly.

`charset`

  Using Oracle server version 9.2 and greater, you can indicate `charset` parameter, which will be used in the new connection. If you're using Oracle server < 9.2, this parameter will be ignored and NLS_LANG environment variable will be used instead.

`session_mode`

  This parameter is available since version 1.1 and accepts the following values: `OCI_DEFAULT`, `OCI_SYSOPER` and `OCI_SYSDBA`. If either `OCI_SYSOPER` or `OCI_SYSDBA` were specified, this function will try to establish privileged connection using external credentials. Privileged connections are disabled by default. To enable them you need to set oci8.privileged_connect to On.

### Return Values

Returns a connection identifier or `FALSE` on error.

### Notes

> Note: Starting with version 1.1 of the oci8 extension, the lifetime and maximum amount of persistent Oracle connections can be tuned by setting the following configuration values: oci8.persistent_timeout, oci8.ping_interval and oci8.max_persistent.

> Note: If you're using PHP with Oracle Instant Client, you can use easy connect naming method described here: » http://download-west.oracle.com/docs/cd/B12037_01/network.101/b10775/naming.htm#i498306. Basically this means you can specify "//db_host[:port]/database_name" as database name. But if you want to use the old way of naming you must set either `ORACLE_HOME` or `TNS_ADMIN`.

> Note: In PHP versions before 5.0.0 you must use ociplogon() instead. This name still can be used, it was left as alias of oci_pconnect() for downwards compatability. This, however, is deprecated and not recommended.

### See Also

- oci_connect()
- oci_new_connect()