Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Enterprise Computing will be upgrading/moving OSU’s administrative Oracle databases (what powers Banner, Data Warehouse, Nolij, and many other services/applications). Notices have already gone out to Outages as well as DCA-All, and a notice will also be going out to users with some level of access to these databases.

What this means for us:
After the database move/upgrade, users will need to use an updated TNSNames.ora file to point to the new location. This file is located in the <Oracle install directory>\Network\Admin folder (typically c:\Oracle\Ora11\Network\Admin). A basic version of this new file (with the standard “OSU” connections) is located at \\software\software\Oracle\11\TNSNAMES\OSU

Starting on Saturday, November 26th, we’ll be pushing the updated version of the file to machines that have the standard TNSNames.ora in the standard location (and thus can be safely overwritten). This covers around 90% of the oracle installs across the fleet.

For users with a nonstandard TNSNames.ora file (or one in a nonstandard location), we cannot safely overwrite the file. These users will be notified of this separately, and may call in for assistance. If all someone accesses is OSU resources, we can assist in replacing the file (rename the old file first). If a user has a customized file, we’ll need to assist them in updating the file via the instructions located in this helpdoc: http://oregonstate.edu/helpdocs/osu-applications/oracle-connections-administrative-databases

The escalation path for issues arising from this change is:

Service Desk -> IT Support Group/DCA (if not a CN customer) -> ACT Support (ACT_Support@lists.oregonstate.edu)