Re: How to best distribute TNSNAMES.ORA file to many clients?

David K. Baux wrote:
>
> Hi everyone, probably a sillie question here, but I'm fairly new
> to Oracle:
>
> We're getting ready to implement an application to lots of
> end-users (> 200), and want to automate client software
> installation and configuration as much as possible. Some
> of the users already use Oracle, some will be brand new.
> Instead of having each end-user run SQL*Net Easy Configuration
> to set up or update their TNSNAMES.ORA file, I was hoping to
> distribute a "generic" TNSNAMES file that would include all
> possible SIDs any user could connect to.
>
> My problem is that it seems that there's no way to generate a
> TNSNAMES file for each client workstation without going through
> SQL*Net Easy Config, which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid
> having each end-user do. I get the familiar "failed to resolve
> service name", even though I know the prototype TNSNAMES file is
> syntactically correct. I've snooped around a bit, and come to
> the conclusion that maybe the TNSNAMES contents are compared
> with a \orant\network\cfg file, but all the doc I've read warns
> me (with bold type!) against hacking these files.
>
> Has anyone experienced a similar scenario? I can't believe what
> I'm trying to do should be so difficult, but then again, I'm an
> idealist <g>. Many thanks in advance.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dave

Through a mistake that we made, we found that Oracle will use a tnsnames.ora file in the current dir first. You might put a tnsnames.ora file that contains only the connection needed for an app and put it in the apps working dir.

-- 
Thomas Griffin
Project Leader
QUALITECH Systems, Inc.
tgriffin_at_qualitech.com