TNSPing????

Normally when doing a tnsping in 9i the app will tell you which tnsnames.ora file it is using.

However om my machine it says it cant resolve the service name and the file it specifies as using is the SQLNET.ora file
????????

is there some setting I missed?

Any ideas or comments?

thanks

jacques

It's using sqlnet.ora as the parameter file

Does your sqlnet.ora file have an entry like this?

NAMES.DIRECTORY_PATH=

Did you get an TNS-03535 error also?

That is exactly what it does!

any ideas?

thanks

j

get rid of the sqlnet.ora file if you arent using a names server - dont really need it there

thanks davey23uk

that did the trick - still not sure why it tried doing that before but its solved now.

Thanks again for all the help

If you're only configuration is via a tnsnames file, you can delete the sqlnet.ora file and it'll look for the tnsnames.ora file by default.

The sqlnet.ora file is handy if you have names (defunct) or an ldap server (Oracle Internet Directory aka OID). Here's why.

NAMES.DIRECTORY_PATH= LDAPSERVER1,BACKUPLDAPSERVER,TNSNAMES (surrounded by less/greater than symbols)

That way if LDAPSERVER is down, BACKUPLDAPSERVER will be used for connection information, and if that's unavailable it'll cascade to your tnsnames.ora file in $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin. Perty nifty, huh. Personally, I like the idea of centrally managed connection information store.

Sounds like you have a simple client side configuration, so, party on.

PS. Davey, US thanks you for Paul Oakenfold, best thing from UK since the Beatles...

what about the spice girls? surely you must love them