- Problems sometimes arise when attempting to connect to an Oracle database. This is almost always due to a misconfiguration in the user’s environment. The following suggestions can often help detect and overcome such problems.
- Ensure you can connect to the database with the service name, user name, and password using SQL*Plus.
- Ensure that you have the correct version of the Oracle client software installed. Oracle 8.1.5 or newer is recommended. Note that many clients have had problems if they have both 8.0.4 and 8.1.x installed on the same computer.
- Ensure that your
ORACLE_HOMEenvironment variable is correctly set—see the Oracle documentation for details on this. This is required for some specific versions of Oracle 8i, and may be required even if SQL*Plus appears to operate correctly without it. - If you have had older versions of the Oracle client software installed, make sure that your PATH variable has the current version’s Oracle folder first, before any other Oracle software, including the WebDB package.
- It is sometimes helpful to define an environment
variable named ORACLE, with the same value as the
ORACLE_HOMEvariable. With some installations, it often helps to ensure that the variable named ORACLE is not defined. - When running on UNIX, the following environment variables should be defined.
| Variable | Contents | Sample Value |
|---|---|---|
| ORACLE_BASE |
Top level of folder into which Oracle client software is installed. |
/opt2/oracle8i/app/oracle
|
| ORACLE_HOME |
The Oracle product folder. |
/opt2/oracle8i/app/oracle/product.8.1.5
|
| ORACLE_SID |
The system ID for the host’s database instance. |
FME
|
| LD_LIBRARY_PATH |
A list of folders
which will be searched for shared objects. This list must include the
|
${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:
|
In most cases, the ORACLE_SERVER_NAME and ORACLE_DATABASE
keywords should be left with blank values, with the ORACLE_DATASET keyword
containing the Oracle service name of the database.