C Oracle Net Services Configuration on Windows

Oracle Net Service Subkeys

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services contains subkeys that correspond to services. Depending on what is installed, your Oracle Net Services consist of all or a subset of the following:

• OracleHOME_NAMEClientCache

• OracleHOME_NAMECMAdmin

• OracleHOME_NAMECMan

• OracleHOME_NAMETNSListener

Each service subkey contains the parameters shown in Table C-1.

LOCAL

You can use parameter LOCAL to connect to Oracle Database without specifying a connect identifier in the connect string. The value of parameter LOCAL is any connect identifier, such as a net service name. For example, if parameter LOCAL is specified as finance, you can connect to a database from SQL*Plus with:

SQL> CONNECT SCOTT
Enter password: password

rather than

SQL> CONNECT SCOTT@finance
Enter password: password

Oracle Net checks if LOCAL is defined as an environment variable or as a parameter in the registry, and uses finance as the service name. If it exists, Oracle Net connects.

TNS_ADMIN

You can add parameter TNS_ADMIN to change the directory path of Oracle Net Services configuration files from the default location of ORACLE_HOME\network\admin. For example, if you set TNS_ADMIN to ORACLE_HOME\test\admin, the configuration files are used from ORACLE_HOME\test\admin.

USE_SHARED_SOCKET

You can set parameter USE_SHARED_SOCKET to true to enable use of shared sockets. If this parameter is set to true, the network listener passes the socket descriptor for client connections to the database thread. As a result, the client does not need to establish a new connection to the database thread and database connection time improves. Also, all database connections share the port number used by the network listener, which can be useful if you are setting up third-party proxy servers.

This parameter only works in dedicated server mode in a TCP/IP environment. If this parameter is set, you cannot use the Oracle database listener to spawn Oracle7 release 7.x databases. To spawn a dedicated server for an instance of Oracle Database not associated with the same Oracle home as the listener and have shared socket enabled, you must also set parameter USE_SHARED_SOCKET for both Oracle homes.

Configuring Authentication Method

Oracle Net Services provides authentication methods for Windows operating systems using Windows Native Authentication.

Configuring Security for Named Pipes Protocol

The network listener service may be unable to open the Named Pipe created by Oracle Names unless service OracleHOME_NAMETNSListener has a valid user ID and password associated with it.

Modifying Configuration of External Procedures for Higher Security

This section supplements generic information provided in Oracle Database Net Services Administrator's Guide to configure a listener on Windows operating systems to exclusively handle external procedures. For a higher level of security, you are instructed to start the listener for external procedures from a user account with lower privileges than the oracle user. For Windows operating systems, this requires that you change the user account from LocalSystem to a local, unprivileged user for the OracleHOME_NAMETNSListenerextproc_listener_name service.

To change the listener account:

1. Create a new user account and grant it Log on as a Service privilege.

   Note:

   Ensure that this user account does not have general access to files owned by oracle. Specifically, this user should not have permission to read or write to database files or to the Oracle Database server address space. In addition, this user should have read access to the listener.ora file, but must not have write access to it.

2. Stop service OracleHOME_NAMETNSListenerextproc_listener_name.

   See Also:

   Your operating system documentation for instructions on accessing the Services dialog and stopping services

   Note:

   If the OracleHOME_NAMETNSListenerextproc_listener_name service does not exist, issue the following command from the command prompt:

   lsnrctl start extproc_listener_name 
   

   This creates the OracleHOME_NAMETNSListenerextproc_listener_name service. When you return to the list of services, stop this service before proceeding to the next step of this procedure.

3. Select OracleHOME_NAMETNSListenerextproc_listener_name service in the Services dialog and then display the properties of the service.

4. Select This Account and enter the username and password.

5. Start the listener by clicking Start. You must start the listener in this way because you cannot use the Listener Control utility to start the listener running as an unprivileged local user.

   Note:

   You can also use NET START OracleHOME_NAMETNSListenerextproc_listener_name to start the listener from the command prompt. Running the listener with lower privileges prevents you from using Listener Control utility SET commands to alter the configuration of this listener in file listener.ora. You can perform other administrative tasks on this listener with the Listener Control utility, including stopping the listener. Oracle recommends that you complete listener.ora file configuration before running the listener.