[cx-oracle-users] AW: cx_Oracle import

[Henning v. B. <H.v...@t-...>]

Hi Felix,

regarding your import problems on Windows:

If you have multiple Oracle homes,
it is not unusual that import problems occur.

The best way is then to write a setup script
(setenv.cmd) for each Oracle home that you
call before you start your application.
In this script, you can use
SET ORACLE_HOME=...
SET ORACLE_HOME_NAME=...
SET TNS_ADMIN=...
SET NLS_LANG=...

For every entry that you find in the windows registry
(HKLM\Software\Oracle\....) that differs between
the Oracle home instances, insert a corresponding
SET statement into your setup.cmd.

Special care must be taken for the PATH entry.

The best solution is to set it explicitly in your setup.cmd,
and just use directories from the one Oracle home you want
to use.

That way, the Operating system and Oracle can not mess around
with the several Oracle homes, and Bjorn Strong-in-the-Arm is
your uncle (everything should work alright).

Remember the Oracle standard way to look for settings is
a) Oracle Registry
b) override with environment variables.

BTW: However, other software (like, for example, the database 
libraries in Microsoft .Net), do not follow that standard 
- so you're quite lost with multiple Oracle homes in .Net.

And another remarkable thing to notice:
Remember Oracle version numbers have nothing to do with the version...

For example, IAS 9i uses Oracle 8i OCI libraries,
and IAS 10g uses Oracle 9.0.1 OCI libraries,
but AFAIK the version cx_Oracle for 9i is generated against
Oracle 9.2, and the OCINLGetNumericInfo function is not
part of the 9.0.1 OCI libraries etc.

Some Other examples:

IAS 10g contains Oracle Forms 9.0.4 = Oracle Forms 10g,
the same with Reports.

Version numbering for Oracle products is more or less
a marketing thing, as it seems.
Don't expect two Oracle products with the same major version
number to work together.

Henning

OT:
Will the next PIXAR animation film in our cinemas
be written in Python? Would be cool...