Oracle clients for FME running on a 64 bit OS

Question

My Workspace is reading or writing to Oracle - which client do I need?

Answer

This depends upon your version of FME:

• If you are running 32-bit FME on a 64-bit machine then you need a 32-bit client.
• If you are running 64-bit FME on a 64-bit machine then you need a 64-bit client.

If you are using the Oracle 10g client or lower, you also need to install the 32-bit FME into some directory other than "C:\Program Files (x86)" as some older Oracle clients have an issue with path names which have parentheses "()" in them. You should receive a warning in FME if this is the case.

It is possible to install both 32- and 64-bit clients together; to ensure proper connection with FME, just make sure that ORACLE_HOME is not defined, and that the PATH includes both instant clients' installation directories (in either order). If you want to use TNSNAMES.ORA, you need to set the TNS_ADMIN environment variable to the directory containing this file.

FME, with either client, can read and write to a 32-bit or 64-bit Oracle database, provided your license level is sufficient.

Troubleshooting

To check which Oracle client you have installed on a 64-bit version of Windows, it is useful to look at the following keys in the registry:
32-bit client keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\wow6432node\oracle
64-bit client keys: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\oracle

Furthermore, if there are any entries in the system path (Path environment variable) that point to non-existent directories, this can also cause problems for Oracle clients.

When requesting support with connections to Oracle on Windows, it is extremely useful to include the FMEReport.html file generated by FMETroubleshoot.bat available at the General Troubleshooting page. Among other things, it will gather information about Oracle clients installed on your system, and environment variables and registry keys used to configure them.