Specifying a Connection Using an Empty Connect String and TWO_TASK

You can set the connect string to an empty connect string (""), and then set the TWO_TASK environment variable to one of the following values:

• A direct address, as described under "Specifying a Connection by Using the Easy Connect Naming Method"

• Oracle Net keyword-value pair

• A tnsnames.ora entry and TNS_ADMIN is set to the location of tnsnames.ora

This method allows the applications to specify internally a connection string if the application code itself uses an empty connection string. The benefit of an empty connect string is that the application itself does not have to specify the tnsnames.ora entry. Instead, when a user starts the application, the location of the database is determined by a script or the environment, depending on where you have set the TWO_TASK environment variable. The disadvantage of using empty strings is that you must configure this additional information in order for the application to connect to the database.