From: Brian Candler <B.Candler@...>
Date: 2003-03-19T00:20:15+09:00
Subject: Re: a trivial Oracle OCI-8 question

On Tue, Mar 18, 2003 at 09:58:00PM +0900, Armin Roehrl wrote:
> this works:
> require 'oci8'
> conn = OCI8.new($dbuser, $dbpass)
> 
> What do I have to change now connect to a different databaseserver?
> Let's try it with localhost first:
> conn = OCI8.new($dbuser, $dbpass, "localhost") 
> #-> complains about no listener (ORA-12541)

The precise error message is:

OCIError: ORA-12154: TNS:could not resolve service name

which gives you a clue: 'TNS' means that the service name has to be listed
in your tnsnames.ora file.

See if you can get as far as using sqlplus to connect to a remote
database, as:
    sqlplus user/passwd@dbname

If you can get that working then the 'dbname' can also be passed to OCI8 as
the third parameter. Just remember it's not a hostname, it's an index into
tnsnames.ora

Can't give you any more advice about the contents of tnsnames.ora - I try to
get away with knowing as little Oracle as possible!

Regards,

Brian.