Oracle ODBC Instant Client for Unix Release Notes
Release 11.2

ODBC Instant Client

Release Notes
Release 11.2

May, 2009

1 ODBC Instant Client

Oracle ODBC Instant Client for Unix systems complies with ODBC 3.52 specifications. It is based on features of Oracle 11.2 ODBC driver for Windows, without the need for a traditional ORACLE_HOME installation.

Note: See Oracle Call Interface Programmer's Guide for information on OCI Instant Client.

1.1 Installing ODBC Instant Client

• Download the Basic Instant Client and ODBC Instant Client packages from the Oracle Technology Network Instant Client page. The two packages must be unzipped into same directory. For example, C:\Oracle\instantclient_11_2.
  
  Basic Instant Client is a prerequisite for installing the ODBC Instant Client.
  
  ODBC Instant Client package has the following files/ shared libraries

File name	Description
libsqora.so.11.1	ODBC Driver shared library
ODBCRelnotesUS.htm	Release note
ODBCRelnotesJA.htm	Japanese release note
ODBC_IC_Readme_Unix.html	ODBC Instant Client for Unix release notes
odbc_update_ini.sh	Script to update odbcinst.ini and odbc.ini files for ODBC Instant Client.

• Make sure Basic Instant Client is deployed before running the ODBC install script.

• Unzip the ODBC Instant Client package, then execute the odbc_update_ini.sh script with Driver Manager installed directory as a command line argument. (For complete syntax, please run "odbc_update_ini.sh" without any command line argument.)
• For example, if Driver Manager is installed in /home/DriverManager directory

                                    $ odbc_update_ini.sh  /home/DriverManger

• It will add the DSN entry in $HOME/.odbc.ini and <DriverManager_HOME>/etc/odbcinst.ini with DSN name as OracleODBC-11g

•  After the installation the environment needs to be configured in the following way.
• Add the directory to the LD_LIBRARY_PATH system environment variable.
• Otherwise ODBC manager will be not able to load/find the driver.

• Define the TNS_ADMIN environment variable to point the .ora files directory for OCI.

• This must be set for OCI to resolve the TNS name.
• If TNS_ADMIN is not set, OCI will examine an operating system dependent set of directories to find tnsnames.ora. This search path includes looking in the directory $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/tnsnames.ora. This is the only reason to set the ORACLE_HOME environment variable for Oracle Instant Client. If ORACLE_HOME is set when running Instant Client applications, it must be set to a directory where Instant Client exists (in this case C:\Oracle\instantclient_11_2). If ORACLE_HOME is not set, then looks in current directory for tnsnames.ora.
• Set any Oracle globalization variables required for your locale. See the Oracle Database 11g Globalization Support Guide for more information.
• For example on Linux to set NLS_LANG:
• setenv NLS_LANG JAPANESE_JAPAN.JA16EUC 

1.2 Uninstalling ODBC Instant Client

• Update ~/.odbc.ini file:
• Remove entry "OracleODBC-11g" from [ODBC Data Sources]
• Remove complete DSN information for [OracleODBC-11g]
• Update $DM_HOME/etc/odbcinst.ini file:
• Remove driver information for [OracleODBC-11g]
• Remove Oracle ODBC driver for Unix Systems
• Delete libsqora.so.11.1
• Delete odbc_update_ini.sh file.
•  Reset any environment variables such as PATH and TNS_ADMIN.

1.3 Bugs Fixed

• Please refer ODBC Release Note.