Will Windows 7 support the Oracle 10G client?

Question

Has anyone heard whether Oracle will support the 10G client Windows 7? I am forced (very unwilling since I started out on SQL Server) to deal with Oracle dev every day and since 7 is "just a polished Vista" (I feel it is far superior and I've been using Vista since RTM) the theory is that it will work fine.

Also, if this is the wrong place to ask this please let me know. Since it's dev-releated, I didn't think it belonged on ServerFault.

Answer 1

I've got it working (10.2.0.4) on Windows 7! Following the recommendations from this blog post I changed the XML and installed the client (10.2.0.3 I believe). To install the patch set for 10.2.0.4 (gives you transactional support on Vista/2008) you run the installer in compatibility mode. While I haven't had a chance to try the transactional support I've at least confirmed the Benthic tool Golden works fine which is further than I've ever gotten before.

This was done on Windows 7 x64 - Oracle client is x86 version as they don't have an x64 of the patch set for transactional support (nor does it exist in some flavors of 11G, however that is possible).

I hope this helps others with the same problem!

Answer 2

The right place to ask it would probably be the Oracle support forums but I'm not going to vote to close since you were so nice about it in the last paragraph. See here.

This one is probably the most helpful. Basically, there'll be no support until at least Win7 goes GA. How long after that before Oracle pulls their stuff together and supports it is anybody's guess.

One possibility to consider: I heard talk Microsoft was going to put a virtual machine manager into Win7 to try and convince all the XP bods to upgrade. That appears to still be the case as documented here and here on Microsoft's own site. If so, you could run Oracle 10g under the VM.

Answer 3

I saw this post and ran across the same problem. I also saw your post over here that said you were able to get it working using 'option 2' that Justin Cave suggested. Were you able to get that working? Could you describe the process in some more detail?

UPDATE: As a follow-up, we were actually able to get it working. Here's how: create a shortcut with the -ignoreSysPrereqs flag on the executable. Run the executable as Administrator, and do NOT use Vista or any compatibility modes. We also installed a loopback adapter (as described here), although I do not know if that had any impact. It works as needed on the developers machines and we appreciate the research you put into this! :)