How do I access an Oracle db without installing Oracle's client and cx_Oracle?

Question

I have two RHEL servers running Python 2.4 and 2.6 separately. There is an Oracle database on the other server I need to access.

I was trying to install cx_oracle on my

Answer 1

Usually, all you need are the libraries, which don't necessarily require sudo rights. Extract them to a place the software will be able to read from and set the following environment variables accordingly:

ORACLE_HOME=path/to/where/you/extracted/libs
TNS_ADMIN=path/to/tnsnames.ora

I have had best luck skipping tnsnames, and just specifying the host, port, etc in the connection, but it's quite possible you'll need it for cx_oracle...I don't remember from when I used it ages ago.