1. Instant Client Installation Guide
  2. Oracle Database Instant Client Preinstallation Tasks

2 Oracle Database Instant Client Preinstallation Tasks

This chapter describes the tasks that you must complete before you install Oracle Instant Client. It includes the following information:

2.1 Checking the Hardware Requirements

The system must meet the following minimum hardware requirements for Oracle Database Instant Client 12c Release 2:

2.1.1 Memory Requirements

The following are the memory requirements for Oracle Database Instant Client 12c Release 1 (12.1):

  • At least 512 MB of RAM.

    To determine the physical RAM size, use System Profiler (/Applications/Utilities/System Profiler) or enter the following command: 

    $ /usr/sbin/system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | grep Memory

    If the size of the physical RAM is less than the required size, then you must install more memory before continuing.

The following are the RAM requirements:

  • Up to 512 MB

  • Between 513 MB and 726 MB

  • More than 726 MB

To determine the available RAM, enter the following command:

$ free

2.1.2 System Architecture

To determine whether the system architecture can run the software, enter the following command:

$ uname -p

Note:

This command displays the processor type. The command output must be i386. If you do not see the expected output, then you cannot install the software on this system.

2.1.3 Disk Space Requirements

The minimum disk space requirement for software files for Oracle Database Instant Client 12c Release 2 (12.2) is 220 MB.

To determine the amount of free disk space available, enter the following command:

$ df -h

2.2 Checking the Software Requirements

Depending on the products that you intend to install, verify that the following software is installed on the system. The procedure following the table describes how to verify whether these requirements are addressed.

Item Requirement

Operating system

The following or later versions of the operating system are supported for Oracle Database 12c Release 2 (12.2):

  • Apple Mac OS X EI Captain 10.11.6

  • Apple Mac OS X Sierra 10.12.5

  • Apple Mac OS X El Captain 10.11.1

  • Apple Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.4

  • Apple Mac OS X Mavericks 10.9.2

Tools

  • Xcode 5.0.2 or later

  • Xcode 8.2.1

  • GNU C compiler (gcc) version 4.2.1 or later

    This version of gcc is included in Xcode 5.0.2 or later.

  • Apple LLVM version 8.0.0 (clang–800.0.42.1)

  • JDK 1.8.0_144

  • JDK 1.6.0_65 or later for Apple Mac OS X Mavericks

Pro*C/C++, Oracle Call Interface, Oracle C++ Call Interface

The version of the GNU C and C++ compiler listed previously is supported for use with these products.

Oracle JDBC/OCI Drivers

You must use JDBC-OCI 1.6.0 or later versions with the JNDI extension.
Oracle ODBC Driver Download and install unixODBC-2.3.1 or later at http://www.unixodbc.org

To ensure that the system meets these requirements:

  1. To determine the operating system version, enter the following command: 

    $ sw_vers

    The output of this command must be similar to the following:

    ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.11.6
BuildVersion:   15G1611

    Note:

    Only the versions listed in the previous table are supported. Do not install the software on other versions of Apple Mac OS X.

  2. To determine if the required version of gcc is installed, enter the following command: 

    $ gcc -v

    This command returns output similar to the following: 

    Configured with: --prefix=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.12.sdk/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple LLVM version 8.0.0 (clang-800.0.42.1)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0
Thread model: posix
InstalledDir: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Toolchains/XcodeDefault.xctoolchain/usr/bin

    If the required version (including the date and build number) or a later version is not installed, then download and install Xcode 5.0.2 or later. You can download this software from the Apple Developer Connection website at

    https://developer.apple.com/

  3. To determine if the correct version of Xcode is installed, enter the following command:

    $ /usr/bin/xcodebuild -version

    This commands returns output similar to the following:

    Xcode 8.2.1
Build version 8C1002

    If the required version (including the date and build number) or a later version is not installed, then download and install Xcode 5.0.2 or later. You can download this software from the Apple Developer Connection website at

    https://developer.apple.com/

2.2.1 Instant Client Light Requirements

In addition to the requirements described in the preceding section, if you plan to use Instant Client Light, then the applications must use the following languages and character sets:

  • Language: Any language that is supported by Oracle

  • Territory: Any territory that is supported by Oracle

  • Character sets:

    • Single byte

      • US7ASCII

      • WE8DEC

      • WE8MSWIN1252

      • WE8ISO8859P1

    • Unicode

      • UTF8

      • AL16UTF16

      • AL32UTF8

      Instant Client Light can connect to databases having one of the following database character sets:

      • US7ASCII

      • WE8DEC

      • WE8MSWIN1252

      • WE8ISO8859P1

      • WE8EBCDIC37C

      • WE8EBCDIC1047

      • UTF8

      • AL32UTF8

Instant Client Light can also operate with the OCI Environment handles created in the OCI_UTF16 mode.

The language, territory, and character sets are determined by the NLS_LANG environment variable.

Note:

Ensure that you set the NLS_LANG environment variable to the required character set before you run Oracle Database Instant Client.