I have just installed Oracle 9i Enterprise edition on my pc. I am running win 2000 prof edition. I would like to use my database to pull down http from the net. I have seen sample code like
select utl_http.request('http://www.oracle.com/')
from dual;
UTL_HTTP.REQUEST('HTTP://WWW.ORACLE.COM/')

this seems to work but if I sub a different URL I get this series of errors:
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-29273: HTTP request failed
ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_HTTP", line 1556
ORA-12545: Connect failed because target host or object does not exist
ORA-06512: at line 1

I get the same types of errors when I use the classic (show_url) sample code. I do not have AIS, only the default http server that is installed along with the 9i database. I have no idea what kind of configuring I need to do in order to make the database be able to "see" the net.

Here is a copy of the show_url code:
CREATE OR REPLACE PROCEDURE show_url
(
url IN VARCHAR2,
username IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL,
password IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL
) AS
req utl_http.req;
resp utl_http.resp;
name VARCHAR2(256);
value VARCHAR2(1024);
data VARCHAR2(255);
my_scheme VARCHAR2(256);
my_realm VARCHAR2(256);
my_proxy BOOLEAN;
BEGIN
-- When going through a firewall, pass requests through this host.
-- Specify sites inside the firewall that don't need the proxy host.
utl_http.set_proxy('proxy.my-company.com', 'corp.my-company.com');

-- Ask UTL_HTTP not to raise an exception for 4xx and 5xx status codes,
-- rather than just returning the text of the error page.
utl_http.set_response_error_check(FALSE);

-- Begin retrieving this web page.
req := utl_http.begin_request(url);

-- Identify ourselves. Some sites serve special pages for particular browsers.
utl_http.set_header(req, 'User-Agent', 'Mozilla/4.0');

-- Specify a user ID and password for pages that require them.
IF (username IS NOT NULL) THEN
utl_http.set_authentication(req, username, password);
END IF;

BEGIN
-- Now start receiving the HTML text.
resp := utl_http.get_response(req);

-- Show the status codes and reason phrase of the response.
dbms_output.put_line('HTTP response status code: ' || resp.status_code);
dbms_output.put_line('HTTP response reason phrase: ' || resp.reason_phrase);

-- Look for client-side error and report it.
IF (resp.status_code >= 400) AND (resp.status_code <= 499) THEN

-- Detect whether the page is password protected, and we didn't supply
-- the right authorization.
IF (resp.status_code = utl_http.HTTP_UNAUTHORIZED) THEN
utl_http.get_authentication(resp, my_scheme, my_realm, my_proxy);
IF (my_proxy) THEN
dbms_output.put_line('Web proxy server is protected.');
dbms_output.put('Please supply the required ' || my_scheme ||
' authentication username/password for realm ' || my_realm ||
' for the proxy server.');
ELSE
dbms_output.put_line('Web page ' || url || ' is protected.');
dbms_output.put('Please supplied the required ' || my_scheme ||
' authentication username/password for realm ' || my_realm ||
' for the Web page.');
END IF;
ELSE
dbms_output.put_line('Check the URL.');
END IF;

utl_http.end_response(resp);
RETURN;

-- Look for server-side error and report it.
ELSIF (resp.status_code >= 500) AND (resp.status_code <= 599) THEN

dbms_output.put_line('Check if the web site is up.');
utl_http.end_response(resp);
RETURN;

END IF;

-- The HTTP header lines contain information about cookies, character sets,
-- and other data that client and server can use to customize each session.
FOR i IN 1..utl_http.get_header_count(resp) LOOP
utl_http.get_header(resp, i, name, value);
dbms_output.put_line(name || ': ' || value);
END LOOP;

-- Keep reading lines until no more are left and an exception is raised.
LOOP
utl_http.read_line(resp, value);
dbms_output.put_line(value);
END LOOP;
EXCEPTION
WHEN utl_http.end_of_body THEN
utl_http.end_response(resp);
END;

END;
/
SET serveroutput ON
-- The following URLs illustrate the use of this procedure,
-- but these pages do not actually exist. To test, substitute
-- URLs from your own web server.
exec show_url('http://www.oracle.com/no-such-page.html')
exec show_url('http://www.oracle.com/protected-page.html')
exec show_url('http://www.oracle.com/protected-page.html', 'scott', 'tiger')


I typically comment out the proxy server stuff because we don't use a proxy server here. What I get when I run this is like follows:

SQL> exec show_url('http://www.google.com')
BEGIN show_url('http://www.google.com'); END;

*
ERROR at line 1:
ORA-29273: HTTP request failed
ORA-06512: at "SYS.UTL_HTTP", line 1022
ORA-12545: Connect failed because target host or object does not exist
ORA-06512: at "SYS.SHOW_URL", line 24
ORA-06512: at line 1

Assuming I have done no further configuration than just completing a basic install.
What do I need to do to make this work?
Thanks,
Clu