Re: Remote automated installation of Oracle clients
- From: "Edgar Chupit" <chupit@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: stephenbooth.uk@xxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:06:44 +0200
In our shop we are using automated installation of Oracle client at
application startup time.
Our application is checking for installed Oracle client. If client version
doesn't much with the one we are trying to install, it tries to uninstall
old client and install new one.
As a client we are using Oracle Instant client 10.2.
To connect to our DB we are using new connect string format
name/pass@//hostname/sid by using this format we can later change "address"
of the server, simply by changing IP entry at DNS server. Because we have
very heterogeneous network and only few databases we didn't even considered
using OID/AD.
From our experience I can fully agree with Niall that a real pain in all
this process is deinstallation of oracle client from user computers,
especially when a user "for security reason" doesn't have enough privileges
on his workstation. Uninstallation should be also performed with care, what
if he has some other application, that you "don't care" about (or he has
installed OracleXE to play with, or he has to connect to 8.0 database, but
new oracle client doesn't support it), what should your script do? Uninstall
it? Replace tnsnames.ora? Or what?
What we have done first of all: we have selected dozen different
workstations (that were bought/installed at different time frames) analyzed
its configurations and developed "patterns" to recognize standard
configuration and to know how to correctly replace it. And than made a
decision, that if we are not sure that we can uninstall Oracle client
"safely" from workstation (if tnsnames.ora is different from default, if
version is unknown, if user has oracle servers binaries, it is better to
inform user describe a problem to him and ask him to contact us to solve
this problem. Because in reality by changing Oracle client you are not only
affecting your application configuration, but you are changing user
workstation configuration. And if you will brake something at users
workstation that user will be very angry at your department and your
application. "Advanced" users never contact us, they are able to solve a
problem by they own.
Of course we only have 350+ workstations spread over 30 sq.km.
On 1/10/07, Stephen Booth <stephenbooth.uk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 10/01/07, Niall Litchfield <niall.litchfield@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Thanks.
Part of the prep work we're doing for this is going to be tracking
down as many of the apps as we can. We're not going to get them all
but we're, of necessity, going for an 80/20 rule. If we find a
solution that deals with 80% of our desktops then we'll consider it a
success and deal with the other 20% as exceptions. Obviously we'll
hope to do better than 80% sorted on the first pass but even that with
2400 'exceptions' will be better than we've got right now.
--
Best regards,
Edgar Chupit
callto://edgar.chupit
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