Overview of Oracle Database Instant Client Installation

1.1 Planning Your Installation

The Oracle Database installation process consists of the following phases:

Review the licensing information: Although the installation media in your media pack contain many Oracle components, you are permitted to use only those components for which you have purchased licenses.

Oracle Support Services does not provide support for components for which licenses have not been purchased.

See Also:

Oracle Database Licensing Information
Plan the installation: This chapter describes the Oracle products that you can install and issues that you must consider before starting the installation.
Complete preinstallation tasks: Oracle Database Instant Client Preinstallation Tasks describes preinstallation tasks that you must complete before installing the product.
Install the software: Installing and Removing Oracle Database Instant Client describes how to install Oracle Database Instant Client.
Complete postinstallation tasks: Oracle Database Instant Client Postinstallation Tasks describes recommended and required postinstallation tasks.

1.2 Installation Considerations

This section contains hardware and software certification information that you should consider before deciding to install this product.

The platform-specific hardware and software requirements included in this guide were current when this guide was published. However, because new platforms and operating system software versions might be certified after this guide is published, review the certification matrix on the My Oracle Support website for the most up-to-date list of certified hardware platforms and operating system versions. The My Oracle Support website is available at

https://support.oracle.com/

You must register online before using My Oracle Support. After logging in, from the menu options, select the Certifications tab. On the Certifications page, use the Certification Search options to search by Product, Release, and Platform. You can also search using the Certification Quick Links options such as Product Delivery and Lifetime Support.

1.3 Oracle Database Instant Client Installation Types

In Oracle Database Instant Client 12c Release 1, Instant Client and Instant Client Light are the only supported installation types.

The Instant Client installation type enables you to install only the shared libraries required by Oracle Call Interface (OCI), Oracle C++ Call Interface (OCCI), Pro*C, or Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) OCI applications.

See Also:

Oracle Call Interface Programmer's Guide or Oracle Database JDBC Developer's Guide for more information about Instant Client

The Instant Client Light (English) version of Instant Client further reduces the disk space requirements of the client installation. The size of the library has been reduced by removing error message files for languages other than English and leaving only a few supported character set definitions out of around 250.

This Instant Client Light version is geared toward applications that use either US7ASCII, WE8DEC, WE8ISO8859P1, WE8MSWIN1252, or a Unicode character set. There is no restriction on the LANGUAGE and the TERRITORY fields of the NLS_LANG setting, so the Instant Client Light operates with any language and territory settings. Because only English error messages are provided with the Instant Client Light, error messages generated on the client side, such as Net connection errors, are always reported in English, even if NLS_LANG is set to a language other than AMERICAN. Error messages generated by the database side, such as syntax errors in SQL statements, are in the selected language provided the appropriate translated message files are installed in the Oracle home of the database instance.

Instant Client Light supports the following client character sets:

Single-byte
- US7ASCII
- WE8DEC
- WE8MSWIN1252
- WE8MSWIN1252
- WE8ISO8859P1
Unicode
- UTF8
- AL16UTF16
- AL32UTF8
Instant Client Light can connect to databases having one of these database character sets:
- US7ASCII
- WE8DEC
- WE8MSWIN1252
- WE8ISO8859P1
- WE8EBCDIC37C
- WE8EBCDIC1047
- UTF8
- AL32UTF8
The advantage of using Instant Client Light is that it has a smaller footprint than the regular Instant Client. The shared libraries, which an application must load, are only 34 MB as opposed to the 110 MB that regular Instant Client uses. Therefore, the applications use less memory.

1.4 Oracle Database Instant Client and Oracle Database Interoperability

For information about interoperability between Oracle Database Instant Client and Oracle Database releases, see Note 207303.1 on the My Oracle Support website at

https://support.oracle.com/CSP/main/article?cmd=show&type=NOT&id=207303.1

1.5 Simplified Patching of Timestamp with Time Zone Data Type

Starting with Oracle Database 12c Release 1 (12.1), the patching process of TIMESTAMP WITH TIMEZONE data type values is simplified.