Solved – The Mystery of SQLDeveloper and the Missing ocijdbc11

This is a follow up to my earlier post about SQLDeveloper being moody and suddenly refusing to connect to a database via TNS.
Having had a bit of a dig around, it would seem that this problem is not platform specific and affects Windows in the same way.
At this point, I’d like to say a big “thank you” to Grzegorz Wilczura, who referred me to this article by Sue Harper.
If you’re hitting this problem on Windows, then you may want to follow the instructions there to set up a TNS_ADMIN environment variable.

Remember, this problem had two primary symptoms :-

1. Empty Network Alias list when defining a TNS connection
2. When testing an existing TNS connection you get :
   Status: Failure – Test failed : no ocijdbc11 in java.library.path

In Sue’s article, it states that SQLDeveloper looks for a tnsnames.ora in the following places in this order :

• $HOME/.tnsnames.ora
• $TNS_ADMIN/tnsnames.ora
• /etc/tnsnames.ora
• $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin/tnsnames.ora

Only one of these places is has an absolute path. The rest all rely on environment variables being set. However, when I run SQLDeveloper from the Ubuntu desktop menu, I’m not starting a shell, so my .bashrc doesn’t get executed. Therefore, these variables are not set.
When I setup my first tns connection, I’d just installed sqldeveloper and ran it by executing the shell script ( sqldeveloper.sh) from a Terminal Window. Of course, the $ORACLE_HOME was set in this environment and SQLDeveloper could therefore see the tnsnames.ora in $ORACLE_HOME/network/admin.

All of this means that the cause of the problem is that SQLDeveloper cannot see, or can no longer see, the tnsnames.ora file.

Copying the tnsnames.ora to /etc will fix the problem. However, probably the best solution is to ensure that we’re only referencing one tnsnames.ora and don’t replicate it. That way, we only ever have to change it in one place, should the need arise.

So, the alternative I’ve chosen is to set the $ORACLE_HOME environment variable in sqldeveloper.sh – the script that gets called to start SQLDeveloper.
Start a terminal and go to the SQLDeveloper home directory ( in my case, I installed SQLDeveloper in /opt) :-

cd /opt/sqldeveloper
sudo gedit sqldeveloper.sh

Now amend the file so it looks something like this :

#!/bin/bash
ORACLE_HOME=/usr/lib/oracle/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server
export ORACLE_HOME
cd "`dirname $0`"/sqldeveloper/bin && bash sqldeveloper $*

Now re-start SQLDeveloper from the Ubuntu menu. Remember, this menu item is simply executing the shell script we’ve just changed.
If you have an existing tns connection defined then you can test doing the following :

1. Right-click the connection and select Properties from the pop-up menu.
2. This will bring up the New/Select Database Connection window.
3. Enter the password in the Password field
4. Hit the test button.

The test should now succeed.

If you haven’t got a TNS connection defined currently, you should now be able to test by setting one up, with no problem.