Re: Client Libraries

pkettlew_at_yahoo.com wrote:
> Is it possible/feasible to install the Oracle Client Libraries (10g)
> on a network drive, then point all clients to those libraries eg path,
> oracle_home, lib etc .
>
> Or do they have to reside on the local machine. If the network drive is
> mapped Oracle should not care what drive the client is installed on ...
> correct ?
>
> thanks for any help
>

I've done exactly this at my installation. Keep in mind that this is not supported, so having difficulties may force you to fix them yourself. But I have not run in to any problems. Here is the method I used:

1. On a PC, created a mapped drive to a network file system. (All PC's at our site use this same network mapping)
2. Installed Oracle on that PC to the mapped drive.
3. Exported HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Oracle and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ODBC.
4. Manually modified the export of HKLM\Software\ODBC to remove anything but Oracle ODBC driver information.

When I need to point a workstation to this client install, I simply do the following:

1. Ensure the map drive is set up correctly. This is normally done through a logon script.
2. Find the Registry export file and double click on it...this populates the registry.
3. Modify the PATH environment variable to point to %ORACLE_HOME%\bin.

That's all there is to it. We used to manually install Oracle Client software on our workstations which took someone approximately 20 minutes per workstation. The above takes less than 5 minutes per workstation, which has saved us approximately 15 minutes per workstation. At our facility, we have over 300 workstations that have Oracle client installed. And those workstations get replaced on a 3 year cycle. So you can see the time savings have been significant.

This procedure is not supported, so use at your own risk......

HTH,
Brian

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Brian Peasland
oracle_dba_at_nospam.peasland.net
http://www.peasland.net

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