Oracle Names

[pras]

Hi everybody,

Pls tell
what is oracle Names?
why it is used???
in which place in oracle we r using oracle names?
anylink(doc) will be helpful


Thanks in advance
pras

[grrickar]

Oracle names is a centralized naming service that allows DBAs to administer database serivce names in either a file on the Oracle Names server or in a regions database. Instead of having clients look up connection information from TNSNames.ora files, they instead may be configured to lookup the info from an Oracle Names server. The names server has automatic failover so you can have more than one setup, and Oracle has done some smart things to make sure clients connect to the ONames server which has the lowest ping time (so connect info lookup is as fast as possible). By setting up an Oracle Names server, you don't have to worry about updating all of your clients tnsnames.ora files every time you change something in the database realm. It is quite easy to configure. Check Oracle Metalink or if you have access to an Oracle docs CD look there for more info.

[rohitsn]

Hi,
Names Server eliminates the use of TNSNAMES.ora file on the client side.In a client-server architecture Oracle client communicates with Oracle server with the description given in the client tnsames.ora file.But with the introduction of NAMES-SERVER the client communicates with the names-server which contains the information about all the databases in your environment.So when a client tries to connect to a database using the connect string,the information is passed to the names-server which contains the connect information about the database and the information is passed to the client back again and the client establishes connection to the database server.
The main advantage of NamesServer is to eliminate tnsnames.ora file on the client side,so there is a centalised administration of the tnsnames.ora file.So any changes has to be made to the tnsnames.ora file it has to be made on the namesserver and on the client side there is a sqlnet.ora file which contains the IP address/hostname of the NamesServer.
Hope I have tried to solve your problem regarding concept of Oracle Names Server.

Regards.
Rohit Nirkhe,Oracle/Apps DBA,OCP 8i
oracle-support@indiatimes.com