I have a question about the Oracle Instant Client that is now supported at ArcGIS v10.1 and its interaction with a tnsnames.ora file.
Pre ArcGIS v10.1 my organization has used a full Oracle Client where we make use of a tnsnames.ora file for ArcGIS to recognize which database to connect to (we have a dev, test, and production SDE database). In the Instance input box I entered oracle:10g and the password had @sde at the end of the string.
I have an ArcGIS v10.1 computer setup with both the full Oracle 10g client as well as the Oracle Instant client. I used the same connection information to connect to SDE in ArcGIS v10.1, but I think it was using the full Oracle 10g client to make this connection. I also then removed the reference to the tnsnames file but I was not able to connect to the SDE database unless I changed the syntax in the Instance input box to SDE database server name/SDE database name. This is not desirable as I will need to include the SDE database server name in every SDE connection which will cause problems when I retire that server.
So my question is "Does the Oracle Instant client work with the tnsnames.ora file?" Or does the tnsnames.ora become obsolete if you migrate to the Oracle Instant client?
