Identify the Oracle Net Services File Locations on a Windows Computer
Windows Client Architecture
When you install Oracle Net Services or SQL*Net software on a Windows client, all of the software is installed onto the C: drive. On the C: drive, Oracle creates a directory called orant (for Windows clients), or orawin (for Windows 7/10 clients). This directory contains all of the Oracle Net Services software and all of the configuration files.
Location Installation
Although the installation provides the option of changing this default, it is not recommended, it is important that the software on all Oracle Net Services clients be installed in same location on the computer.
The following SlideShow illustrates the structure of the c:\orant\bin directory.
The following images illustrate the structure of the c:\orant\bin directory.
Oracle Net executables are located in c:\orant\bin directory. These consist of DDLs and the actual executable Net8 software. It is very important never to touch any of the items in this directory.
The other important directory is the one that contains the locations of the configuration parmaeter files, such as the tnsnames.ora file.
For Oracle Net clients, the parameter files are located in the C:\orant\net\admin directory.
Oracle provides samples of the sqlnet.ora and tnsnames.ora parameters files in the C:\orant\net\admin\sample directory.
Again, take care never to touch any of the files in c:\orant except the configuration file in the \network\admin directory. You can edit these files manually in MS-Notepad, or you can use the SQL*Plus products to maintain them. The next lesson discusses how to use SQL*Net Easy to add an entry to your tnsnames.ora file.