Gary, you are correct, you need to install the Oracle client libraries
on any machine where you run AOLserver or any other Oracle client
program. This also means you have to have the Listener configured
correctly on the server, and the
sqlnet.ora and
tnsnames.ora files configured correctly on the client.
The Oracle client stuff is shipped with the RDBMS software, start up
Oracle's Java installer the normal way, then just click on things to
select only the client software. I recommend installing all
the Oracle client stuff, not just the "Runtime" client. Easier to do
that than find out later that your database driver works but you can't
use sqlldr because it wasn't installed on the client, etc.
Also, Oracle tends to install all its software with overly restrictive
file permissions. And at least on Windows, Oracle does not
report file permissions problems correctly! So if you get a strange
TNS failure when trying to connect to a remote database -
especially if you are not logged on as the same user who
installed the Oracle client sofware - check the permissions on the
relevant files. For example, I have seen failures because I bizarrely
did not even have read access to this file:
"C:\oracle\ora92\network\ADMIN\tnsnames.ora"
(On Windows, to fix file permissions, you will, of course, need to
turn off the moronic default "Use simple file sharing". It's in
Windows Explorer; menu Tools, Folder Options, View tab; "Advanced
Settings". But likely you're running Linux on the client side too, so
you don't have to deal with that silliness.)
