Remote connection to Oracle 10g Express via ODBC

For some strange reason the Oracle 10g Express installation will not run the configuration web client for me but it works all fine for the testing folks. But it installs happily in a virtual PC, and it runs/configures just fine.

Now to connect from my PC I need some client stuff. On the Oracle 10g Express page it has a client download, which you would think would do the business. But does not. The current approach in the office is to install the complete Express server and just ignore the server parts. That idea stinks, so with some help from a co-worker I got the correct option work.

Install the Instant Client, for ODBC (god bless VB6.0 applications) you need to:

1. Download the Instant Client Package - Basic and Instant Client Package - ODBC

2. unzip them to C:\\Oracle\ and the will make a instantclient_10_2 subdirectory. The resulting directory C:\\Oracle\\instantclient_10_2 will be referred to as <dir> from now on.

3. run <dir>\\odbc_install.exe

4. create a file in <dir> called tnsnames.ora with the contents:

    Name Of TNS =
    (DESCRIPTION =
    (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = your_server_name)(PORT = 1521))
    (CONNECT_DATA =
    (SERVER = DEDICATED)
    (SERVICE_NAME = XE)
    )
    )
   

   replacing your_server_name with the name/ip address of you remote server. You can name you TNS with a sensible name by replacing Name Of TNS

5. Add <dir> to the PATH environment variable

6. Add new environment variable TNS_ADMIN with value <dir>

7. Now you can use the Data Source (ODBC) tool to setup the DSN like via the Oracle in instantclient 10_2 Driver

Done!

Updated: Changed the naming the TNS part to be correct.