ORA-12505 error

[MyPoorLeafs]

I have searched this error and tried making changes to the Listener.ora file to no avail. I am defintely a newbie here. Currently where I work, we have a corporate app that installs a TNSNames files within an Orawin32 directory that is created also. Typically if I needed to access a datasource over the network I create an ODBC connection and no problem.
I then installed Oracle Forms 6i (to teach myself)and have been having difficulty with ODBC ever since, with an internal app and TOAD. I eventually got TOAD working by making a change in its SQL*Net settings....by fluke really.
Anyways..I know there is probably something basic that an Oracle DBA or developer would know...your help would be appreciated.

The exact error is:

ORA-12505: TNS:listener could not resolve SID given in connect descriptor


Thank you

[davey23uk]

have you got two versions of the file on your system now - you may be looking at the wrong one

[MyPoorLeafs]

I only have 1 Listener.ora

[davey23uk]

tnsnames.ora - not listener.ora

[MyPoorLeafs]

I have a few of those...how do I make sure it is pointing to the correct one?

Thanks

[davey23uk]

whatever your default ORACLE_HOME is, it will look in there and then network\admin

find the one you want and either set the defaut oracle_home to be there, or set TNS_ADMIN as a global environment variable to point to that directory.

[svk]

This error should mean that the SID used in listener.ora and SID used in tnsnames.ora are not matching.

If you are connecting to a db that is running locally on the machine, you will need to check both places. If its a remote db, you need to make sure that your tnsnames.ora file contains correct SID in the alias definition.

[MyPoorLeafs]

Davey23UK
I’m not sure how to do this

svk
Before installing Oracle forms, I had no problems. Is there a way to revert back to not using listener.ora and just using the Orawin32\Network\Admin tnsnames? Listener was only installed on my system when I installed Oracle.

On a side note…I tried to uninstalled Oracle Forms and I can't find it in Add/Remove programs and I can’t find an uninstall.exe. The OS is XP.


Thank you both very much for your help on this.

[davey23uk]

oracle is crap with its installer. You have to fire up the installer again and choose deinstall products