Re: Difference between SID and SERVICE_NAME

Hello Marcel,

one reason is using Parallel Server (or RAC). To use Transparent Application Failover or Load Balancing you must use service_names (it may work with the same SIDs at both cluster nodes but this is advised against).

Next reason to keep the old syntax is the need of changing a lot of clients' tnsnames.ora files. Imagine a big company having thousands of clients, each with one tnsnames.ora accessing three different instances. Changing them may be a nightmare.

A third reason may be the Net8 API through which you may offer your own services.

HTH. Martin

Marcel Kraupp wrote:
>
> Hello Everybody
>
> Today, we had an issue where we'd regularly would get
> an "ORA-03123 operation would block" error. This
> could be solved by changing the entry in tnsnames.ora
> using SERVICE_NAME=xyz instead of SID=xyz
>
> Now, while this seems perfect to live with, it still makes
> me wonder what the difference between SID and SERVICE_NAME
> is. I was led to believe that SID is used up to and including
> 8i, while SERVICE_NAME is used 8i onwards, but basically mean
> the same thing. Obviously, they don't. Who can enlighten me?
>
> TIA
> MK
Received on Mon Jul 15 2002 - 03:08:54 CDT