This usually happens when an older Oracle client is used against a newer Oracle database.

To fix this, upgrade your Oracle client version to at least the same version as your database. You can see the version information for both the client and the server in the Connection Diagnostics on Golden's help menu.

In some cases the Oracle Client will fail to login and report back an empty error message. SQLPlus (from the same Oracle Home) will also fail to login.

There is a known problem with Oracle Client 10.2 which Oracle fixed in patch set 10.2.0.3. This is discussed in Metalink note 361325.1.

If you aren't using the 10.2 client and you get an empty error message, this generally means that there is a permissions problem for the user. The user needs read/execute rights to the Oracle Client Home and subdirectories and read rights to HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Oracle.

The latest versions of our products should work properly with the Oracle Instant Client without any special settings. The following instructions are for older versions of our products, if things don't seem to be working, or if you have a nonstandard installation.

Oracle Instant Client is a new Oracle client install that is smaller and easier than using the full Oracle client install. To use instant client with our products just follow Oracle's instructions on setting up the instant client. Then you just need to use the 'Options' button on our product's login window and fill in the OCI DLL field. This field should be something like "c:\oracle\oci.dll" (of course you should use the path that corresponds to where the instant client is installed on your machine or network.) To use a tnsnames.ora file with instant client just set the TNS_ADMIN system variable to be the path to your tnsnames.ora file.

So the steps we took to get the Oracle Instant Client working were:

1. Copy the Instant Client dll's to C:\Oracle
2. Put C:\Oracle at the beginning of our PATH system variable.
3. Copy our tnsnames.ora to C:\Oracle
4. Added the system variable TNS_ADMIN with a value of C:\Oracle
5. Set the OCI DLL field of Golden's Login Options window to "C:\Oracle\oci.dll" (you will have to restart Golden after setting this value.)

Please let us know if you have any problems or questions!

Our applications all connect directly to Oracle using the Oracle Client software. Our applications are sensitive to incorrect Oracle settings in your registry (more so than Oracle's applications which are generally hard coded for a particular client version and installed in the same directory as the client files.) Here are some tips to help you check your Oracle Client configuration/installation:

• Make sure you are not forcing a particular oci dll in Golden's login options window (the field should be blank.)
• Make sure your Oracle home's \bin directory is in your system path and appears before any other Oracle paths.
• If you have multiple Oracle homes installed, make sure that the latest one (or the one you wish to use) is your primary (or default) home. You can do this using Oracle's Home Selector which should be on your start menu under Oracle Installation Products.
• Make sure you have created your desired database alias in your tnsnames.ora file. You can do this by hand or by using Oracle's Net Manager (ignore this one if you use Oracle Names Server).
• Check that the correct tnsnames.ora file is being used. Usually this is the default location in your primary Oracle Home (\Network\Admin) but can be forced using the TNS_ADMIN environment variable or registry setting.
• Double check your NLS settings in your registry. If you have registry entries from an older Oracle install and can't get things to work, you might want to delete your HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Oracle key (back it up first!) and reinstall the client.

If one of these doesn't solve your problem take a look at your connection diagnostics in Golden. You can find it under the Help menu. Make sure to attempt to login first (and then click cancel to go to the main window.) There is an option to copy the diagnostics to the clipboard which you can then email to support@benthicsoftware.com along with a description of your problem and we'll try to figure out what is wrong.

In general our products will check your machine's registry settings to determine the correct Oracle Home directory and then search that directory for the correct Oracle OCI .dll file to use. Incorrect registry settings and 'orphaned' OCI dll files can sometimes confuse our products. A cleanly installed Oracle Client should always work! Oracle does not clean up its registry settings when you uninstall products, so be aware that if you install an Oracle Client and then remove it, those settings are still in your registry and can cause problems.

Oracle client versions 8.03 and 8.04 have a bug where they will not report the error position. Please upgrade to at least Oracle 8.05 client files to fix it.