How to change the Oracle Client user in a connection

Question

I have the oracle 10 and 11 clients instaled in my machine. When i go to the command line and type TNSPING the output tells my something like this

TNS Ping Utility for 32-bit Windows: Version 10.2.0.1.0 - Production on 16-OUT-2012     09:34:39

so, i assume that this machine is using the 10 version of oracle client to handle the connections.

How to change it?

Answer 1

If you go to a command line and type "tnsping" on a Windows machine, whichever Oracle Home is listed first in your PATH environment variable will be the Oracle Home that is used. If you want the 11g Oracle Home to be the default, you can edit the PATH environment variable (Control Panel | System | Advanced | Environment Variables) and move the 11g Oracle Home path ahead of the 10g Oracle Home path. Alternately, you should be able to open the Oracle Universal Installer from the 11g install and use the Oracle Home selector that is in that utility to change the order of the paths in your PATH environment variable. Behind the scenes, that tool is just rearranging the directories in your PATH.

Whether the default Oracle Home is being used by a particular application, though, is a somewhat different matter. Some applications are set up to use whichever Oracle Home happens to be the default. Other applications can make use of components installed in the non-default Oracle Home. Since you tagged this question ODP.Net, I assume that the application(s) you are actually concerned about are using ODP.Net. If that's the case, you probably want to look through the ODP.Net FAQ where it discusses using ODP.Net on a client with multiple Oracle Homes.

Answer 2

Exactly for the same reason I have made the following tool: http://oratools.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Oracle%20Home%20Selector&referringTitle=Home

it searches for oracle clients installed on machine, and allows to switch current oracle home by modifying registry, environment variables and registered libraries