Patching Oracle Client 11g2 versions on SQL Server

Question

We have a SQL Server 2014 running on a Windows Machine, with Oracle Client 11.2.0.1.0 running. This client is used to Allow SQL server connect to remote Oracle Data sources.

This is the directory for which it's installed in: e:\app\user\product\11.2.0\client_1\

Due to an incompatibility issue, We need to upgrade/patch the Oracle client version to 11.2.0.4.0

Will this upgrade:

A) Create a second instance/directory of Oracle Client so that two different versions exist?

B) Solely overwrite/upgrade the existing version?

The reason I ask, On a completely different machine before, I had to upgrade from Version 10 to Version 11, which created seperete installation directories, and was a nightmare to have our prod support team update the Windows environment variables to have it point the TNS names to the newest version.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Different versions are installed in different Oracle Homes, so I would expect the next installation to be say e:\app\user\product\11.2.0\client_2\

Are you sure that 11.2.0.4.0 is the client version that you want to use? If you have an Oracle support contract, the knowledgebase article is Client / Server Interoperability Support Matrix for Different Oracle Versions (Doc ID 207303.1). If not, I am sure that you can find the matrix using Google. I'd be inclined to for something in the middle like 12.2.

You can set the %tns_admin% environment variable to point to the location of the sqlnet.ora and tnsnames.ora files. Personally I like to have them in a separate folder. SQL Server would probably need to be restarted to pick up the new environment variable, if you decided to go for that.

See https://oracle-base.com/articles/misc/oracle-instant-client-installation for an example.