Installing Oracle Instant Client Basic Light

Learn how to install Oracle Instant Client Basic Light.

• About Oracle Instant Client Basic Light
  The size of the Instant Client Basic Light library is smaller than Oracle Instant Client. This is because Instant Client Basic Light contains only English language error message files and only a few supported character set definitions out of around 250.
• Globalization Settings for Oracle Instant Client Basic Light
  Learn about the character sets supported by Oracle Instant Client Basic Light.
• Installing Oracle Instant Client Basic Light Packages
  Learn how to install Oracle Instant Client Basic Light by downloading zip files or by using the package repository.

About Oracle Instant Client Basic Light

The size of the Instant Client Basic Light library is smaller than Oracle Instant Client. This is because Instant Client Basic Light contains only English language error message files and only a few supported character set definitions out of around 250.

The Instant Client Basic Light version is geared toward applications that use either Unicode, ASCII, and Western European character set support. There is no restriction on the LANGUAGE and the TERRITORY fields of the NLS_LANG setting, hence, Instant Client Basic Light operates with any language and territory settings. Only English error messages are provided with Instant Client Basic Light, hence, error messages generated by the client, such as Net connection errors, are always reported in English, even if you set NLS_LANG to a language other than AMERICAN. Error messages generated by the database server, such as SQL statement syntax errors, are generated in the selected language provided that you install the appropriate translated message files in the Oracle home of the database instance.

Globalization Settings for Oracle Instant Client Basic Light

Learn about the character sets supported by Oracle Instant Client Basic Light.

Oracle Instant Client Basic Light supports the following client character sets:

Single-byte

• US7ASCII
• WE8DEC
• WE8MSWIN1252
• WE8ISO8859P1

Unicode

• UTF8
• AL16UTF16
• AL32UTF8

Oracle Instant Client Basic Light can connect to databases having one of these database character sets:

• US7ASCII
• WE8DEC
• WE8MSWIN1252
• WE8ISO8859P1
• WE8EBCDIC37C
• WE8EBCDIC1047
• UTF8
• AL32UTF8

Oracle Instant Client Basic Light returns an error if any other character set is used as the client or database character set. Oracle Instant Client Basic Light can also operate with the OCI Environment handles created in the OCI_UTF16 mode.

Installing Oracle Instant Client Basic Light Packages

Learn how to install Oracle Instant Client Basic Light by downloading zip files or by using the package repository.

Installing Oracle Instant Client Basic Light Using Zip Files

To download and use zip files to install Oracle Instant Client Basic Light, follow the instructions in Installing Oracle Instant Client Using Zip Files. However, unzip the file instantclient-basiclite-windows.x64-21.3.0.0.0dbru.zip instead of instantclient-basic-windows.x64-21.3.0.0.0dbru.zip.

Installing Oracle Instant Client Basic Light Using the Setup Wizard

To manually download and install Oracle Instant Client Basic Light, follow the instructions in Installing Oracle Instant Client Using the Setup Wizard. The Oracle Instant Client Light library is available in light\libociicus.so. To use libociicus.so move it to the install directory. For example, move libociicus.so to the Oracle client home directory C:\app\oracle\product\21.0.0\client_1\ and remove libociei.so.