Question

I am able to connect to an Oracle database using several tools, but am unable to connect using Toad for Oracle 8.5.3 (though before a login/logout to Windows I was able to).

I am not using TNSNAMES.ORA to connect. I have two Oracle homes:

C:\Oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1
(OraClient10g_home1) and
C:\Oracle\product\10.2.0\client_2
(ODACHome2)

where client 2 was installed after client 1.

I have tried Toad with each home, but I get “ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier specified” when I supply the database name, user name, and password. I can connect using SQL*Plus using this same information, and I can connect via ADO.NET (ODP.NET). tnsping (client 2) to the server works, but tnsping (client 1) does not.

My PATH environment variable contains, in order:

C:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_2\bin;C:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\bin

and changing the order of PATH seems to have no effect. When I added the line

NAMES.DIRECTORY_PATH= (LDAP, TNSNAMES)

to sqlnet.ora of client 2, Toad still could not connect, but the error message appeared much more quickly.

Answer 1

I found the answer rather quickly after I posted, but I don’t know if this is the best solution. I copied the ldap.ora file from client 1 to client 2. ldap.ora had lines like the following, which I have munged for security reasons:

DIRECTORY_SERVERS= (XXXXX:389:636,YYYYY:389:636)

DEFAULT_ADMIN_CONTEXT = ""

DIRECTORY_SERVER_TYPE = OID