Instant Client

Avoid installing Oracle Client to access database-Instant Client

I had faced many challenges while installing Oracle Client on my new laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium as I believe there are some critical files not bundled with this pack. I effortlessly installed Oracle client on Vista Ultimate. But now you can even avoid installing client to access database. Learn how. I made a habit of documenting this kind of ‘problems WITH solution ‘ and it became a our blog post .

What is Instant Client?

Oracle introduced ‘Instant Client’ as an alternative to install Oracle client to run your applications. Benefit, less disk space used and very important is to avoid step by step client installation for creating ORACLE_HOME

Installation Steps:

1. Download the appropriate Instant Client packages for your platform. All installations REQUIRE the Basic or Basic Lite package.

2. Unzip the packages into a single directory such as “instantclient_10_2 ".

3. Set the library loading path in your environment to the directory " instantclient_10_2 " (or Step 2 Directory)

4. Now that you are in the instantclient_10_2 directory you will need to set up some environment variables to be able to run SQL Plus

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=

export TNS_ADMIN=.

export ORACLE_HOME=.

5. Now you will need to create of copy a tnsnames.ora file into your current directory

6. To connect your database, run this command ./sqlplus username/password@databasename

Note: SIDNAME is database name in your TNSNAMES.ora

Download Instant Client

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/oci/instantclient/index.html

Problem I faced: Unable to install Oracle Client on your PC having Windows Vista Home Premium?

Steps:

1. Download the appropriate Instant Client packages for your platform i.e. Instant Client Package - Basic/Basic Lite (OCI,DLL files) e.g. instantclient-basic-win32-11.1.0.6.0.zip for Windows

2. Unzip the package . It will be unzipped as “ instantclient_10_2”. I recommend to place this in you C:/ Directory

3. Run Setup for Oracle Client. Restart on Prompt. Done. Enjoy

4. Or

5. Install SQL Developer. Download from http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/sql/index.html

Happy Connecting!!

Keep connecting here.