Oracle SQL Developer and Data Modeler are becoming more and more popular as they are both cost-free and available on many Operating Systems (Linux/Unix,Windows and Mac) with different installation types: “This zip does not include JRE” or “This zip file includes the JRE”. On linux, the choice is limited because the only version available doesn’t include Java Runtime Environment. And it’s an RPM !! So what… In this post I will provide all information required to install and run these tools on an Ubuntu machine.

My solution was to download the tar.gz archive for Oracle SQL Developer and the Windows version for the Data Modeler.
It contains the binaries for Windows and Linux. Of course without JRE 🙂
After changing the permission to execute the SH scripts, I faced (as the most of you) the following error for both tools:

jew@Biederthal:/opt/datamodeler/datamodeler/bin$ sh /opt/datamodeler/datamodeler.sh
Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler
Copyright (c) 1997, 2011, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.

Type the full pathname of a J2SE installation (or Ctrl-C to quit), the path will be stored in ~/.datamodeler_jdk
^C

I have the path to my Sun Java executable in my PATH variable… and the version is above of the requirements (JDK 5.0 Update 12). The JAVA requirements are:

java -version
java version "1.6.0_26"

So what does it mean? Oracle believes that you install SQL Developer and/or Data Modeler on the same mount point as Java. Check the files //datamodeler/datamodeler/bin/datamodeler.conf and/or //sqldeveloper/sqldeveloper/bin/sqldeveloper.conf  for the Java Home:

SetJavaHome ../../jdk

Replace the entry by your real java installation path, below my installation as I require also SUN Java for Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control

SetJavaHome /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre

If you want to install the SUN Java on your Ubuntu and also configure it for Firefox, follow my collegue’s post.
https://www.dbi-services.com/index.php/blog/entry/configure-firefox-3612-with-ubuntu-for-grid-control-and-my-oracle-support-usage

If the system still complains about JRE, disable the JDK check by adding the following line:

SetSkipJ2SDKCheck true

Et voila 🙄 I wish you a nice time with these tools!

Cheers,
Jérôme