Meeting TOAD’s Database Connectivity Needs
TOAD must be able to communicate with your Oracle database. That means TOAD must be able to both connect and then work with your database whether it’s local (on PC) or remote (on server). This requires that the Oracle network client libraries exist on your PC for TOAD to call. Of course, Oracle in its infinite wisdom has renamed the client software and libraries as shown in Table 1.1.
| Version | Terminology | Client Library |
|---|---|---|
| Oracle 7 | SQL*Net | ORA7x.DLL |
| Oracle 8 | Net8 | ORACLIENT8.DLL |
| Oracle 8i | Net8 | ORACLIENT8.DLL |
| Oracle 9i | Oracle Net | ORACLIENT9.DLL |
| Oracle 9iR2 | Oracle Net | ORACLIENT9.DLL |
Furthermore, you must also verify that your PC’s environment variable for PATH includes the directory where those network client libraries are installed (that is, the Oracle installation directory). Of course, this too has changed over the Oracle versions and can also be modified by the person doing the install. Here are some examples of locations where they might be found:
C:ORAWINBIN
C:ORAWIN95BIN
C:ORANTBIN
C:ORACLEBIN
C:ORACLEORA92BIN
Failure to install and reference these client libraries will prevent TOAD from functioning. However, you must also keep in mind your version of the client libraries versus the database you are talking to. Having client libraries from an older version of Oracle but talking to newer versions of Oracle is a recipe for disaster. You may encounter Oracle OCI API error messages from within TOAD. This might occur as TOAD attempts to call an OCI function for some new features or capability of the newer database version that the older network client library does not support.
For example, using an 8i client with a 9i database and attempting to work with columns whose data type is XMLTYPE will yield the cryptic message: OCI-21500: internal error code, arguments: [kocgpn129], [2], [], [], [], [], [], []. This is not a TOAD bug or lack of TOAD support for new features, but a simple user error of trying to use old or incompatible network client libraries with newer versions of the database. The best advice is to always use the latest and greatest network client, as it is always backward-compatible with prior database versions.