Installing an Oracle Client

This describes how to install an Oracle client on a machine that's not running the database

Download the files

One must be a registered user on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN, http://otn.oracle.com). One can then follow the links on the OTN to the download page - a few forms need to be filled in. I (AditSantokhee) used IE6.0 under Windows to download the client packages as I faced similar problems as JonBlower when he was downloading the Oracle Database on mozilla 1.5.

Install the client

All installations REQUIRE the Basic package and therefore it should be installed first. By default, the client programs are installed in the /usr/lib/ directory. A new folder oracle is automatically created and it contains all the files. However, we found that we needed to create new folders : network and admin (subfolder) manually in the 10.0.1.2 folder to store the tnsnames.ora file.Then we had to set the library loading path.On many UNIX platforms, LD_LIBRARY_PATH is the appropriate environment variable. On Windows, PATH should be used. According to guidelines on (http://otn.oracle.com/software/tech/oci/instantclient/htdocs/linuxsoft.html), the installation should have been a fairly direct and easy process.

Create tnsnames.ora

Create tnsnames.ora (I don't think it matters where you create it). Add the following text (this assumes that the Oracle database is running on marlow.nerc-essc.ac.uk).

TEST =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = marlow.nerc-essc.ac.uk)(PORT = 1521))
    (CONNECT_DATA =
      (SERVER = DEDICATED)
      (SERVICE_NAME = test)
    )
  )

Set the environment variables

• Set ORACLE_SID to the SID of the database you want to connect to ("test" in this example).
• Set TNS_ADMIN to the location of the tnsnames.ora file

-- JonBlower - 03 Mar 2004