Installing PHP and the Oracle Instant Client

PHP OCI8 is the PHP extension for connecting PHP to Oracle Database. OCI8 is open source and included with PHP. The name is derived from Oracle's C "call interface" API first introduced in version 8 of Oracle Database. PHP OCI8 links with Oracle C client libraries, which are included in the Oracle Database software and also in Oracle Instant Client.
Oracle Instant Client is a free set of easily installed libraries that allow programs to connect to local or remote Oracle Database instances. To use Instant Client an existing database is needed because Instant Client does not include one. Typically the database will be on another machine. If the database is local then Instant Client, although convenient and still usable, is generally not needed because PHP OCI8 can be built using the database libraries.

Installing PDO_OCI and OCI8 PHP extensions on CentOS

I am currently working on a PHP project that requires using an Oracle server as the database. I
This tutorial assumes that you have already installed php and other packages (e.g. php-pdo) you normally need. This was also tested with an installation of Oracle 11g Express. I’m not sure if this will work for higher versions.

Dependencies

Development packages

$ sudo yum install php-pear php-devel zlib zlib-devel bc libaio glibc
$ sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"

InstantClient