[SGVLUG] Probably OT: an oracle question...

[Emerson, Tom]

Since I'm not anywhere near "guru" status in regards to Oracle, I'm looking for a little enlightenment on something that has me really scratching my head.

In our setup, we are NOT using any centralized name services [yeah, seems dumb to me too, but that's what we're stuck with...] Instead, we are maintaining a "tnsnames.ora" file on each and every client [think "hosts" file...]  (*)

One of our end-users recently had a viral infestation that resulted in her receiving a new windows XP setup -- everything locally was "wiped out", including [you guessed it] the tnsnames file.  She is, of course, now complaining about errors she gets in our application when it tries to refer to an oracle database.

As it turns out, she doesn't even HAVE a "tnsnames" file anymore -- it seems the technician that re-installed the software for her overlooked the need for an oracle client or whatever would have created said file.  Now, here it the funny part: she DOES have an ODBC driver for Oracle databases, so the program will load, but fails to "find" our database.

What can or should I do for this user?  The instructions we give our installers includes one or two "stanzas" of hostname/configuration information to add to the tnsnames file, but without a tnsnames file to update in the first place, this gets rather difficult...

Tom

[reply offline to tom.emerson at wbconsultant.com unless you think your response would benefit others as well]

(*) It -is- entirely possible that WB is using a centralized tns "name server", so to speak, but if so our particular group hasn't been added to the "A-list" of users, so we're relegated to the backwaters around here...