Re: oracle client network install

On Sat, 17 Nov 2001 18:03:41 +0100, Sybrand Bakker <oradba_at_sybrandb.demon.nl> wrote:

>On Sat, 17 Nov 2001 11:27:57 -0500, "rocr" <ro_cright_at_hotmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Hi gang,
>>-- I am trying to setup a client installation on +100 clients machines
>>(windows 2000) that will run an application that queries an oracle database
>>loaded on a server(windows 2000 Server Advanced Edition).
>>-- I do not want to run separate oracle client installations at each
>>machine. I would like to install the client on a shared drive on the
>>network and have the users map a drive to it, call it the O:\ drive. (The
>>login script will map this drive). I want everyone to share the
>>tnsnames.ora and sqlnet.ora files (I do not want to maintain over 100
>>versions of these files). I will also have the ORACLE_HOME set by the login
>>script.
>>-- Is there anything else that I need to do in order to make this work?
>>
>>thanx
>>rocr
>>
>
>I am afraid this is not going to work at all. There has never been an
>explicit mention of a network install in the installation
>documentation, I tried myself at various times, and never got it
>working.
>You would of course still need to update 100+ registries or connect
>them one way or another to a network registry.
>But then again, my bets still are you won't get it working.
>
>Regards
>
>Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA
>
>To reply remove -verwijderdit from my e-mail address

Actually, we used to do this very thing. It worked reasonably well, except it did increase network traffic, having to pull the oracle client executables across the LAN. We backed off on it to improve application load time.

And as Jim Kennedy pointed out, you still have to set the registries on the workstation. An alternative (that we still use) to putting IFILE= in the local TNSNAMES is to set TNS_ADMIN in the registry to point to a shared TNSNAMES file. The biggest problem we've had with THAT is third party DBA software (I won't name names) that doesn't know that Oracle has more ways of resolving a connect string than simply a TNSNAMES file located in oracle_home\network\admin.

• Ed -- Ed Stevens (Opinions expressed do not necessarily represent those of my employer.)