Oracle ODBC Instant Client for Unix Readme
Release 12.1
December, 2012

1 ODBC Instant Client for Unix

Oracle ODBC Instant Client for Unix systems complies with ODBC 3.52 specifications. It is based on features of Oracle 12.1 client, 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_12_1.
  
  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.12.1	ODBC Driver shared library
sqora.htm	Help file
ODBC_IC_Readme_Unix.html	ODBC Instant Client for Unix readme (this file)
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-12c

•  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_12_1). 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 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-12c" from [ODBC Data Sources]
• Remove complete DSN information for [OracleODBC-12c]
• Update $DM_HOME/etc/odbcinst.ini file:
• Remove driver information for [OracleODBC-12c]
• Remove Oracle ODBC driver for Unix Systems
• Delete libsqora.so.12.1
• Delete odbc_update_ini.sh file.
•  Reset any environment variables such as PATH and TNS_ADMIN.

1.3 Bugs Fixed

• Please refer to ODBC Release Notes.