Installing Oracle Instant Client for Mac OSX

I came across few links for installing Oracle Instant Client on Mac OS X namely – this and this. But I don’t like to tinker with the System paths while installing any s/w manually. I did the same with perl CPAN modules, I install them locally in home directory and same with Python pip packages, but that’s another post for future. So I had to work out the following method for installing the Oracle Instant Client as I needed sqlplus client for connecting to my RDS Oracle instance.

Download the following two files from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/intel-macsoft-096467.html

instantclient-basic-macos.x64-11.2.0.4.0.zip
instantclient-sqlplus-macos.x64-11.2.0.4.0.zip

These will be downloaded in the Downloads directory

Unzip these two files in a single directory

$ cd Downloads
$ unzip instantclient-sqlplus-macos.x64-11.2.0.4.0.zip
$ unzip instantclient-basic-macos.x64-11.2.0.4.0.zip
$ cd ~

Create the required structure in the home directory and copy the files in place

$ mkdir -p oracle/product/instantclient_64/11.2.0.4.0/{bin,lib,jdbc/lib,rdbms/jlib,sqlplus/admin,network/admin}
$ mv Downloads/instantclient_11_2/ojdbc* product/instantclient_64/11.2.0.4.0/jdbc/lib/
$ mv Downloads/instantclient_11_2/x*.jar product/instantclient_64/11.2.0.4.0/rdbms/jlib/
$ mv Downloads/instantclient_11_2/glogin.sql product/instantclient_64/11.2.0.4.0/sqlplus/admin/
$ mv Downloads/instantclient_11_2/*dylib* product/instantclient_64/11.2.0.4.0/lib/
$ mv Downloads/instantclient_11_2/*README product/instantclient_64/11.2.0.4.0/
$ mv Downloads/instantclient_11_2/adrci instantclient_11_2/genezi instantclient_11_2/sqlplus instantclient_11_2/uidrvci product/instantclient_64/11.2.0.4.0/bin/

Make the following additions to your ~/.bashrc file –

ORACLE_HOME="~/oracle/product/instantclient_64/11.2.0.4.0"
PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/bin:$PATH
alias sqlplus="DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME/lib sqlplus"

Now I can connect to the Oracle RDS instance using –

$ sqlplus 'root@(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=ajitabh-oracle-test.bkl9a9lqwsoxcd.us-west-1.rds.amazonaws.com)(PORT=1521))(CONNECT_DATA=(SID=ORCL)))'

SQL*Plus: Release 11.2.0.4.0 Production on Wed Aug 26 21:59:46 2015

Copyright (c) 1982, 2013, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Enter password:

Connected to:
Oracle Database 11g Release 11.2.0.4.0 - 64bit Production

SQL>

That’s it. More on exploring Oracle RDS later.