Connecting to a remote Oracle DB with Nodejs through Oracledb Driver

Question

Hey I'm really trying to figure out how to connect to a remote Oracle test DB and I have no experience in Java. So if I could get your help, I would be forever grateful.

I have a remote test database I'm trying to connect to and I have a jdbc connection with an old style SID. According to this link: https://github.com/oracle/node-oracledb/blob/master/doc/api.md#notjdbc, I'm supposed to create a tnsnames.ora file to put the connection in, like so:

tnsnames.ora:

appDB =
 (DESCRIPTION =
   (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = hostname)(PORT = 1521))
   (CONNECT_DATA =
     (SID = ORCL)
   )
 )

and then I'm supposed to reference it in my node server.js file, like so

server.js:

const oracledb = require('oracledb');
oracledb.getConnection(
  {
    user          : process.env.ORACLE_USER,
    password      : process.env.ORACLE_PASSWORD,
    connectString : "appDB"
  },
  function(err, connection)
  {
    if (err) {
      console.error(err.message);
      return;
    }
    connection.execute(
      "SELECT * " +
        "FROM BOS_course",
      function(err, result)
      {
        if (err) {
          console.error(err.message);
          doRelease(connection);
          return;
        }
        console.log(result.rows);
        doRelease(connection);
      });
  });

module.exports = {
    oracledb
};

However, I have no idea where I'm supposed to put the tnsnames.ora file. I found this link online $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin but I don't know what it's referring to. I only have limited access to the database. Excuse my Java ignorance. How can I use this connection in my node app, which lives completely separate from the database? How does my app know what "appDB" is and how to find it in the tnsnames.ora file?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

put the complete connection address in the connectString variable

{ user : process.env.ORACLE_USER, password : process.env.ORACLE_PASSWORD, connectString : "(DESCRIPTION =(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = hostname)(PORT = 1521))(CONNECT_DATA =(SID= ORCL)))" }

Answer 2

To technically answer the question, set the environment variable TNS_ADMIN. Then node-oracledb (and other OCI-based language APIs like Python cx_Oracle, PHP OCI8, Ruby ruby-oci8 etc) will look for $TNS_ADMIN/tnsnames.ora.

Answer 3

I have a similar case where I have two VM on azure. One for Oracle12c DB and other is for nodejs oracledb package with Oracle client-side libraries. This is my connection string from client-side to connect with remote DB.

module.exports = {
  user          : process.env.NODE_ORACLEDB_USER || "hr",
  password      : process.env.NODE_ORACLEDB_PASSWORD || "welcome",
  connectString : process.env.LOCAL || "myipaddress:1521/servicename",
};