How does Toad use Oracle Home and PATH?

Afternoon,

I have a few Oracle clients installed on my desktop:

9208 - on the PATH
XE - not on the PATH
10205 - not on the PATH
11106 - not on the PATH.

My Toad is 10.5.1.3.
My colleagues Toad is 9.5.

I can use any of the above to connect to a database, even if Toad says
it’s not valid (all non-valid homes are “not on the path” according to
the advice link.)

A colleague cannot use an Oracle Home unless it is on the PATH (Granted
he’s on Toad 9.5 GA).

Just wondering how Toad loads stuff from the non-path Oracle Homes that
I use! :wink:

(No rush, it’s not important, just me being curious.)

Cheers,
Norm. [TeamT]

Norman Dunbar
Contract Senior Oracle DBA
Capgemini Database Team (EA)
Internal : 7 28 2051
External : 0113 231 2051

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We get the path out of the registry info that Oracle puts down. I guess we did
something different in 9.5.

Morning John,

thanks for that. I much prefer the 10.5 method of operation as it means
I can pick any Oracle Home I like and use it, even if it is off the
PATH.

However, this leads to a slight problem - when being told that the OH I
want to use is invalid!

Maybe the red text could be "amber" if a home is off path, but
everything else is ok?

Just a thought. I imagine a lot of people will only use homes that show
up as valid, and if they have many valid homes, it does imply that they
are all on the PATH - which might causes nasties.

For example, if I have 9i and 7.3 client (don't ask - it's government
work!) with 9i first on the path all appears well, until I use an MDAC
enabled app that has the registry setting configured to use the &.3
client - at that point, all hell breaks loose!

For this reason, I keep everything off path, except 9i, and with Toad, I
can pick and choose. (Except for the 7.3 client!)

Cheers,
Norm. [TeamT]

Norman Dunbar
Contract Senior Oracle DBA
Capgemini Database Team (EA)
Internal : 7 28 2051
External : 0113 231 2051