Re: SIDs on network

dom wrote:

> Hi Daniel,
>
> Please excuse my lack of knowledge here; I am an complete Oracle
> newbie.
>
> I'm writing a Windows client application; I'd like to scan the LAN for
> Oracle servers. E.g. my test setup consists of Oracle Ent. running on
> my development laptop, aswell as a dedicated machine also running
> Oracle Enterprise. When I run my application on this LAN, I'd like the
> two (assuming once instance per machine) servers' SIDs to show up in a
> listbox...
>
> OEM == Oracle Enterprise Manager?
>
> Many thanks,
> dm.
>
> DA Morgan <damorgan_at_exesolutions.com> wrote in message news:<3E249B32.37F8A1B8_at_exesolutions.com>...
> > dom wrote:
> >
> > > How can I scan for a list of Oracle SIDs available to connect to on a
> > > given network? Is it possible?
> > >
> > > Thanks, dm.
> >
> > What kind of network and servers?
> >
> > OEM does it.
> >
> > Daniel Morgan

As Niall, and possibly others, indicate you can get the information sometimes from tnsnames.ora but other times you can not. And even if you can you would need to know where it is located as in many places the file is not located on client machines but rather on a server and there may be multiple copies that are mutually inconsistent.

But what I'd really like to address is that I would never let your tool into any company as it is a violation of security and a disaster waiting to happen.

Basically, if I want any user or any tool to know what servers host what Oracle databases I, as SysAdmin or DBA, will tell that person or tool explicitly. Part of my security structure is the fact that no user, no outsider, and no software tool knows where the family jewels are hidden. I think you should seriously consider that many SysAdmins and DBAs will strongly oppose allowing such a tool anywhere near their mission critical servers: I for one. I don't even let users have entries in TNSNAMES.ORA for databases for which they do not have permission to connect.

Daniel Morgan Received on Wed Jan 15 2003 - 18:09:19 CET