3 Installing and Removing Oracle Database Client

The Oracle Database Client software is available on Oracle Technology Network website. This chapter describes the following sections:

Downloading and Installing the Oracle Database Client Software

The following steps describe how to install the Oracle software:

  1. Download the Instant Client for Linux on POWER Systems (64-bit) package from the Instant Client Downloads page on Oracle Technology Network at
  2. Create a directory on your computer, for example, instantclient. Choose a directory to install the Oracle Instant Client and unzip the downloaded zip file in that directory. The unzipped file creates the instantclient_12_2 directory.
  3. Set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH and the NLS_LANG environment variables to the full path of the instantclient_12_2 directory. For example, if you unzipped the Instant Client zip file in the /bin/oracle directory, then set the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable to /bin/oracle/instantclient_12_2.

    See the "Instant Client Light Requirements" section for information about setting the NLS_LANG environment variable to the required character set.

    This completes the installation of Oracle Database Client. To connect to the Oracle Database server, run the client from the Oracle Database Instant Client environment.

  4. The Object Type Translator Utility (OTT) utility may have to be modified to reflect the correct environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH as ORACLE_HOME may not be available.

Note:

If you want to use VAC compiler, then you must set the COMPILER=VAC value in the environment. Also, set the VAC_VERSION as follows:

  • For Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.1, set:

    VAC_VERSION=13.1.2

  • For SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, set:

    VAC_VERSION=13.1.1

In addition to the preceding task:

  • Ensure that xlC is in the PATH of your environment.

  • Also, set COMPILER_MODE = 64 if you want to build a 64-bit demo executable.

Removing the Oracle Database Client Software

To remove the Oracle Database Client software, delete the instantclient_12_2 directory.