RE: tnsnames.ora not working ?

I've seen this sort of thing happen when you have more than one Oracle_Home and client tools get confused about which tnsnames.ora file to use. Fastest solution is to find every tnsnames.ora file on the client computer and make sure that they are all identical. Correct solution is usually to make sure that there is only one set of network control files and set the TNS_ADMIN environment variable to point at the one and only directory that contains them.

I've sometimes had to deinstall all copies of Oracle Net tools and reinstall just one.

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 10:49 AM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Hello,
I'm trying to add description in my $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/tnsnames.ora, but it seems that the client (ie. sqlplus) wont use it. Whenever I try to connect to the service using sqlplus, I got :

$> sqlplus

Enter user-name: developer_at_dev_db
Enter password: *****
ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve service name

I tried to add the description to my ~/.tnsnames.ora too with no luck. The entry in the tnsnames.ora is:

DEV_DB =
   (DESCRIPTION =

     (ADDRESS_LIST =
       (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = hostname)(PORT = 1521))
     )
     (CONNECT_DATA =
       (SERVICE_NAME = dev_db)
     )

(note: I removed the real hostname for privacy/security reason of course)

However, when I use sqlplus using the following way:

$> sqlplus

Enter user-name:
developer@(description=(address=(protocol=tcp)(host=hostname)(PORT = 1521))(CONNECT_DATA =(SERVICE_NAME = dev_db))) Enter password: *****

It would work, where all the information from the description is just a copy-paste from the tnsnames.ora file.

Is there anything I overlook? Sorry if this is kinda a newbie question. I'm still learning my way around this. I'm using Oracle9i on Redhat Linux.

Thanks for any help.

Reuben D. Budiardja

-- 
Reuben D. Budiardja
Department of Physics and Astronomy
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
---------------------------------------------------------
"To be a nemesis, you have to actively try to destroy 
something, don't you? Really, I'm not out to destroy 
Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional 
side effect."
                 - Linus Torvalds -

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Author: Reuben D. Budiardja
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