--- DENNIS WILLIAMS <DWILLIAMS@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Michael > Thanks for the additional info. At this point I > appreciate all I can get. > Although you did have some unsettling news ("our TNS > entries would no longer > work in a few cases" ???). > ... Ref: GLOBAL_NAMES It's nothing systematic. Our 'corporate' policy was to set TRUE on all databases. I tested many of my instances and found the settings were usually FALSE. No big suprise that people would not follow their own guidance. :-) I discovered the TNS alias problem by curiosity and luck. There were a few new TNS entries among our hundreds of databases in the tnsnames.ora file, one or two I was actually using at the time, where I noticed it would be impossible to keep the TNS alias and convert the database to TRUE. I remember thinking to verify GLOBAL_NAMES=TRUE when testing new TNS configurations at this client site. Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact reason. At the time, I double checked to confirm it would cause a problem, and made a couple test cases as proof, because it seemed so unlikely. Normally, you can setup tnsnames.ora at the server to be almost anything and fix this type of problem, but these guys used the same file for client and server. I know the developers would have been upset if we had to change the client TNS aliases. Sorry. I wish I could remember the exact reasons. Frustrating for me too. I might simply suggest verifying the TNS entries after setting it TRUE. HTH Regards, Mike Thomas __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe send email to: oracle-l-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put 'unsubscribe' in the subject line. -- Archives are at //www.freelists.org/archives/oracle-l/ FAQ is at //www.freelists.org/help/fom-serve/cache/1.html -----------------------------------------------------------------