USB Flash Drive -- tnsnames.ora

Question

I would like to be able to run the SQL Developer from a USB flash drive. Everything works great except I have a tnsnames.ora file referenced in my connections.
Does anyone know if there is a location in the SQL Developer folders that I can place the tnsnames.ora file, so that it would be read by SQL Developer. I would like to be able to plug in the USB drive without setting TNS_ADMIN or having oracle home, and was wondering if the software would also check a directory as an option.
The reason I like the tnsnames.ora, is that I have a RAC'd environment with multiple servers and the simple connection tab does not allow me to enter multiple servers. Thanks.

Answer 1

Hello all,
I'm evaluating SQL Developer today (7/11/2007) and I wanted to describe a technique my company uses to start apps that require an Oracle environment to be created prior to startup. We use a command file for this purpose. The .cmd file resides in the same folder as the application executable (sqldeveloper.exe in this case) and looks like this -
------------ sqldeveloper.cmd ------------------------------------------------------------------------
@echo off
setlocal
REM cd to the system drive just in case..
c:
cd %TEMP%
REm this file sets some Oracle variables
call X:\Oracle.10gR2.EN.001\dba\oracle.cmd
REM cd to the location where sqldeveloper was placed
cd "C:\Program Files\sqldeveloper"
REM specifiy the folder where the tnsnames.ora resides
set TNS_ADMIN=X:\Oracle.10gR2.EN.001\network\admin
REM start the app, in this case SQL Developer
start sqldeveloper.exe
The file X:\Oracle.10gR2.EN.001\dba\oracle.cmd in the call command above contains -
set ORACLE_HOME=X:\Oracle.10gR2.EN.001
set TNS_ADMIN=X:\Oracle.10gR2.EN.001\%ORA_SETUP%\%ORA_NAMES_SRV%
set ACCESS=C:\Program Files\Ora01.102
path %ACCESS%;%ORACLE_HOME%\bin;%windir%\System32;%windir%
set API=%ORACLE_HOME%\dbs
set OLEDB=%ORACLE_HOME%\oledb\mesg
set NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.WE8MSWIN1252
set SQLPATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\DBS
set SQLPLUS=%ORACLE_HOME%\sqlplus\mesg
set OO4O=%ORACLE_HOME%\oo4o\mesg
set NLSRTL33=%ORACLE_HOME%\ocommon\nls\mesg
set NLSRTL32=%ORACLE_HOME%\ocommon\nls\mesg
set ORA_NLS32=%ORACLE_HOME%\ocommon\nls\admin\data
set ORA_NLS33=%ORACLE_HOME%\ocommon\nls\admin\data
The X: drive above is a network drive where Oracle utilities are installed, so I don't actually have to have them installed on my PC. The tnsnames.ora is also maintained by the DBA, so no one needs to have it (or the Oracle client) on his/her own PC. This drive is automatically mapped to my PC at startup.
When I start up SQL Developer by double-clicking on a shortcut pointing to the .cmd file, it reads the tnsnames.ora specified above. When I switch the Connection Type in the Connection dialog box from Basic to TNS, my tnsnames.ora entries appear in the Network Alias dropdown.
One issue I'm noticing with this approach is that when I right-click on the Connections node and select New Connection, it takes a few minutes to read the tnsnames.ora, and when it finally returns control, it lists each tnsnames node multiple times in the dropdown. None of my other apps (TOAD for example) do this. However, this is a minor issue, shouldn't stop me from using the tool.
Hope this helps..