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Connecting to Oracle

These notes were written for Oracle Version 9 and Version 10g. The names of the Oracle products, and how they are packaged, can be different for different releases of Oracle.

Prerequsite Software

In order to connect to an Oracle database, you need to install the Oracle Client or Instant Client on your PC.

In addition to this, you need an Oracle ODBC Driver. You will have a choice of:

While AQT works with both ODBC Drivers, we strongly recommend that you use the Oracle ODBC Driver. The Microsoft ODBC is limited in functionality. Principally:

Oracle Net Configuration

To configure a connection between your PC and an Oracle server you need to run the Oracle Net Configuration. Once you start this, select Local Net Service Name configuration then Add. You will be asked the following information:

Once you have configured this connection, you will be able to access your Oracle database using SQL*PLUS.

ODBC Driver Configuration

In order to access your Oracle database using AQT, you will need to configure an ODBC Datasource for your database. The general process for doing this is described in Configuring a Database Connection.

To configure this, specify:

With the Oracle ODBC Driver, it is a good idea to click on Test Connection to check that the connection has been set up correctly.

In addition (for the Oracle ODBC Driver)

Installing the Oracle Instant Client

To install this, you need to download two packages:

We found that the "Client Package - Basic Lite" did not work for us.

Follow the instructions to install the products, and to install the ODBC Driver. You will also need to:

When configuring the ODBC Driver (as per the ODBC Driver Configration discussion above), you may get error The setup routines cannot be loaded due to system error code 126. The cause of this appears to be due to a couple of dll files missing from the install. These are:

You will need to get these dlls from a machine which has the full client installed on it (they will be in c:\Windows\System32). Copy them either to your c:\Windows\System32 or your Instant Client directory.

Diagnosing Connection Problems

See the section Oracle - Diagnosing Connection Problems

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