Global naming for workstation, but not the server?

From: Thomas T <T_at_T>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 15:57:14 -0400
Message-ID: <3f15ae1a$1@rutgers.edu>

Hello,

We have a Windows 2000 server running Oracle 8i. The application (IIS/ASP/JScript/COM w/Visual C++ 6) talks mainly to our database, but will talk to another Oracle 8i database in a different department for a few operations. For this post, I'll call the TNS name "otherdbprod", and it's service name "otherdb". Occasionally, we run a report to query that other system to ensure that no transactions were lost due to any miscellaneous errors.

The other department performed an "upgrade" (which I could not find out the details of) to their 8i database, and today, we were not able to log on to the system from our workstations (Win2k professional, Oracle 8i client, SQL*Plus 3.3). After an email, their DBA told me to add the ".world" suffix to their database's service name, in our tnsnames.ora file, to make it "otherdb.world". The fix worked, our workstations can connect again. I assume they set global_names to true on their server.

Now here's where I get confused: On -our- server, global_names is set to false. On our server, through SQL*Plus, I can still connect to the "otherdb" service name. I don't need to change it to "otherdb.world".

Why is that? I don't understand why the server can use "otherdb" but our workstations need to use "otherdb.world". We're not doing a remote database link, either. Here'd be an example of our tnsnames.ora files from both the workstations and the servers. Names are changed to protect the innocent! :)

workstation:

OTHERDBPROD.AD.MYDEPT.MYCORP.NET =
  (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS_LIST =
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = 192.168.0.9)(PORT = 1521))
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = 192.168.0.9)(PORT = 1526))
    )
    (CONNECT_DATA =
(SERVICE_NAME = otherdb.world)

    )
  )

our database server:

It just doesn't make sense to me. Plus, both SQL*Plus versions are identical, and both the server and the workstations use Net8. Am I missing a setting somewhere? Can you tell a server not to use global naming, but a workstation always uses global naming regardless? I don't want to have to set global naming = true for our server if we don't have to; it's our production server, and I'd rather not go through testing again for something that I can leave turned off.

I tried an internet search, but all I could find was data about database links, and like I said, we're not using a database link with them. (The connection is done through OLE DB.) Thanks!!

-T Received on Wed Jul 16 2003 - 14:57:14 CDT