Driver Requirements
This section provides the system requirements for using the Oracle driver on Windows, UNIX, and Linux.
IMPORTANT: You must have all components of the Oracle client software installed; otherwise, the driver will not operate properly. You must have the appropriate DLLs or shared libraries and objects on your path.
Although an earlier version of a client can access a later version of a database, for example, client 9i to server 10g, to ensure that you have access to all of the features of a particular database, you should use the client that matches the database version, for example, client 10g to server 10g.
NOTE: The Oracle driver supports Oracle 10g clients; however, the clients are not available for all operating systems supported by the driver. Consult the Oracle Web site for current client availability.
Windows
Oracle Net8 Client 8.1.6 or higher is required.
UNIX and Linux
Oracle Net8 Client 8.1.6 or higher is required (8.1.6.1 on Linux).
Before you can use the Oracle driver, you must have a supported Oracle client installed on your workstation in the $ORACLE_HOME source tree. ORACLE_HOME is an environment variable created by the Oracle installation process that identifies the location of your Oracle client components.
Set the environment variable ORACLE_HOME to the directory where you installed the Oracle client. For example, for C-shell users, the following syntax is valid:
For Bourne- or Korn-shell users, the following syntax is valid:
Building the Required Oracle Net8 Shared Library on HP-UX 11
A one-time site linking to build a replacement Oracle Net8 shared library is required for Oracle Net8 Client 8.1.6 on HP-UX 11.
This site linking binds your unique Oracle Net8 configuration into the file, which is used by the Oracle driver to access local and remote Oracle databases.
The Oracle driver requires the shared library libclntsh.sl, which is built by the Oracle script genclntsh. The genclntsh script provided by Oracle causes errors resulting from undefined symbols. Users running Oracle 8 on specific platforms with certain versions of Oracle client software must use the genclntsh816 script provided with the Oracle client-based driver to build a replacement libclntsh.sl. This script, in the src/oracle directory, places the new libclntsh.sl in ../../lib, which is your $ODBC_HOME/lib directory; it does not overwrite the original libclntsh.sl in the $ORACLE_HOME/lib directory.
Before you build the Oracle Net8 shared library, install Oracle and set the environment variable ORACLE_HOME to the directory where you installed Oracle.
For Oracle Net8 Client 8.1.6 on HP-UX 11, the following commands build the Oracle Net8 shared library:
Connecting to Oracle 8.1.7 from HP-UX
To connect to Oracle 8.1.7 from HP-UX, you must have the HP patch PHSS_22514 incorporated into the operating system, and you must set the LD_PRELOAD system variable to the absolute path of the libjava.sl library.