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Oracle 10g XE and TNSNAMES.ORA issue

My machine for various reasons has multiple Oracle Clients...SQL*NET for connecting to Oracle 8.17 , NET8 for connecting to a 10g instance . I cannot change this as this is the setup by various vendors. I installed the Oracle 10g Express Edition on the same machine as a testbed fro development, when I did, i could no longer use applications such as ODBC and OLEDB adapter for Visual Studio to connect to instances defined in the TNSNAMES.ORA in the SQL*NET and NET8 clients, so i copied the definitions into the XE's TNSNAMES.ORA, but it did not work. After removing 10gXE and associated registry keys, everything works fine. What am I missing here ? How does windows decide which ORACLE_HOME to use ?

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slightwv (䄆 Netminder)

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shelbyinfotech

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Ok , I follow this, but alas it it not installed, can you recommend a freeware/open source tool other than this one ? If not , i can just write a script

shelbyinfotech

ASKER

I downloaded Oracle Locator from DBMotive, free and handles what I need, AND thanks for pointing me in the right direction as to how this is done, you didn't give me the tool, but more importantly an understanding of how this works.

slightwv (䄆 Netminder)

Problems like this is why I didn't post a link to that tool. If I've never used a tool I won't suggest one from a Google search.

If changing the default HOME in the registry doesn't help I'm not sure where to point you.

You should be able to set ORACLE_HOME at the time you need it.

I'm not a Visual Studio expert but I would hope it would know what to use by what products you reference. If not, it must be going from either the ORACLE_HOME environment variable or the default home.