OCI connections to multiple Autonomous Transaction Databases in the Oracle Always Free cloud

I still use PL/SQL developer to work in our Oracle Databases. It is a tool I’ve been using for years and old habits seldom die.. In fact Pl/SQL developer is the only sound reason I have parallels desktop (nowadays: UTM) installed on my Mac.

PL/SQL developer connects to the database using an Oracle Client. This can be a full blown client or it can be the InstantClient. I use the latter.

You must have heard about Oracles “Always Free Autonomous cloud”. I love it.

When you create a database and must connect to it, be it SQL Developer or an OCI using program (like PLSQL Developer). You first must dowload a wallet. We should make a small change to our sqlnet.ora file and copy the entries into our tnsnames.ora. This works like a charm, until you must connect to multiple databases, in multiple domains.

I solved it as follows:

1. My client resides in C:\Oracle\

2. My windows environment says: TNS_ADMIN = C:\Oracle\

3. I created an extra folder structure:

   1. C:\Oracle\wallets\devdomain

   2. C:\Oracle\wallets\tstdomain

4. The wallet.zip for the devdomain I placed in the “devdomain” directory and of course the tstdomain.zip I placed in “tstdomain” and unzipped both in their folders

5. I didn’t touch the sqlnet.ora for me it looks like
   SSL_SERVER_DN_MATCH=yes

6. I refer to the wallet location in the tnsnames.ora file:

    oraconfxdev_high.richardmartens.oci = 
       (description= (retry_count=20)(retry_delay=3)
          (address=(protocol=tcps)(port=1522)
             (host=adb.eu-amsterdam-1.oraclecloud.com))
       (connect_data=
          (service_name=something_goes_here_high.adb.oraclecloud.com))
       (security=
          (MY_WALLET_DIRECTORY = "C:\the\dir\containing\unzipped\wallet")
          (ssl_server_dn_match=yes)))
   

So I added the line that says where this entry should take the wallet from. (MY_WALLET_LOCATION)

Now PLSQL Developer is able to connect to all my instances, however before switching from one DB to another I first nicely must log-off. Logging on into a database while still connected to another gives me a ORA-12529: TNS:connect request rejected based on current filtering rules.

Logging of before establishing a new connection is something I can live with.

Regards,
Richard