Need help connecting to Oracle

I need help connecting to Oracle. I'm absolutely new to it.

SA help states that:

SA Help wrote:

Before you can connect to an Oracle database server, you must have Oracle client software installed on the computer running SQL Assistant. The client software must be properly installed and configured. Its network configuration files must include connection settings for any Oracle servers that SQL Assistant will connect to. These files must be located in the ORACLE_HOME directory whose name is referenced by the ORACLE_HOME variable in the system registry. This variable is stored under the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE

The first thing I found on oracle.com referring clients was on this link. Though this might not be the thing help refers to since it also mentions some registry key (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE) that is definitely not created by the (rather simple) installation process of Oracle Instant Client, which basically doesn't do anything besides making you extract the contents of a zip archive somewhere and manually adding that path to PATH variable.

Oracle Instant Client Installation Overview wrote:

General Instant Client installation steps are:
1. Download the desired Instant Client packages for your platform. All installations require either the Basic or Basic Light package.
2. Unzip the packages into a single directory such as "instantclient_12_2".
3. Set your environment's library loading path (for example LD_LIBRARY_PATH on Linux, or PATH on Windows) to the directory created in Step 2.
4. Start your application.

I'm pretty much stuck here. Any help is appreciated.

Hi,

Typically you just run the Oracle graphical client installation program that installs the connectivity software, (e.g. Oracle Net8) and Oracle utilities.

Next step is to run Oracle's "Net Configuration Assistant" graphical utility and add named connection to your database. (experienced users may edit tnsnames.ora file directly in Notepad).

Select Local Net Service ...configuration and follow the steps. This will create so called Oracle TNSNAME that contains configuration parameters (much like named ODBC profile)

Once you've done that, in SQL Assistant you chose Oracle database connection type, and enter something similar to what I have on the screenshot below.

Obviously in the connection parameters you change TNS name to what you have choose in the above step, and enter your account credentials.
You can also try using ODBC and ADO.NET methods, but the basic steps are the same. With ODBC you would also need to configure an additional ODBC profile referring to the same TNS Name. Different types of connectivity drivers may have somewhat different behavior in handling different data types and options. You should choose what works best for your needs.

Hope that helps

Thank you very much, I'm going to give this a try. One thing is certain, the Instant Client downloaded is not the graphical client I'll need. I'll keep searching.

Instead of using graphical tools, locate TNSNAMES.ORA file and open it in Notepad. Normally this file can be found in %ORACLE_HOME%\network\admin folder.

Add the following to the end of the file, save changes. "sales_svr" in that example is the TNSNAME that you would to enter in the connection dialog in SQL assistant

	Code:
	sales_svr = (DESCRIPTION= (ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=tcp)(HOST=10.0.1.155)(PORT=1521)) (CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=orcl))

What you need to replace in this example.
sales_srv - basically how you want to name that conenction
ip address for the server
port if using non-default 1521
servide_name - see your Oracle server configuration or ask server's DBA.

For more info, please see
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/network.111/b28317/tnsnames.htm#NETRF262