Which oracle client do I Need?

Question

I need to connect to vision instance on a remote server using my machine. I came to know that I need to have oracle client installed on my machine.
Can someone clarify which oracle client do I need? I am running on windows- XP on NT Server. Version of Vision instance is 11.5.10.2.
I appreciate for your help. URL Link should be great.
This is what I download and unzip to C:\Oracle\instantclient_10_2.
instantclient-basic-win32-10.2.0.3-20061115.zip
Is it the correct one?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Your setting
-Doracle.net.tns_admin=/usr/local/oracle/oas03/network/admin
is ok if this directory contains the correct tnsnames.ora file.
I have done some poking around, and I suspect that you use an old JDBC driver.
I have written a sample Java program that tests a connection with java.sql.DataSource using JDBC thin and tnsnames.ora, and it works fine with Oracle 10.2.0.3 but fails with Oracle 10.1.0.5 with exactly the error message you get.
The property oracle.net.tns_admin exists only since Oracle 10g R2 (see Metalink note 333686.1).
With 10.2.0.3 I was not able to reproduce your error message, when I set a wrong oracle.net.tns_admin I get "Io exception: could not resolve the connect identifier", and when I omit the property altogether, I get "Io exception: Unknown host specified".
Please double check if Vision uses the JDBC driver you think it does!
Yours,
Laurenz Albe
PS: maybe the test program is useful for somebody. I will post it:
* Test a DataSource connection with tnsnames.ora
* Usage:
* java -classpath .:/oracle/dir/ojdbc14.jar -Doracle.net.tns_admin=/tnsnames/dir tnsname user password
public class DataSourceTest {
public static void main(String[] args) throws java.sql.SQLException {
if (3 != args.length) {
System.err.println("Usage: java DataSourceTest <TNS-Name> <user> <password>");
System.exit(1);
// enable the following for trace output
// need to use ojdbc14_g.jar for this
/* java.util.logging.Logger logger = java.util.logging.Logger.getLogger("oracle.jdbc.driver");
logger.setLevel(java.util.logging.Level.FINEST);
java.util.logging.Handler handler = new java.util.logging.ConsoleHandler();
handler.setLevel(java.util.logging.Level.FINEST);
logger.addHandler(handler);
oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleLog.setTrace(true); */
oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSource ods = new oracle.jdbc.pool.OracleDataSource();
ods.setURL("jdbc:oracle:thin:@" + args[0]);
java.sql.Connection conn = ods.getConnection(args[1], args[2]);
java.sql.ResultSet rs = conn.createStatement().executeQuery("SELECT user FROM DUAL");
rs.next();
System.out.println("Successfully connected as user " + rs.getString(1));
conn.close();
}