Installing Oracle Instant Client Basic Light

Learn how to install Oracle Instant Client Basic Light on Linux x86-64 and Linux for Arm (aarch64) platforms.

Parent topic: Installing Oracle Instant Client

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, only 37 most common character set definitions out of around 250, and only monolingual collations.

The Instant Client Basic Light version is geared toward applications that do not use legacy, rare character sets. 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 supported by Oracle Database. However, the value of the NLS_SORT setting cannot be a multilingual or Unicode collation, that is, a collation with the suffix _M or prefix UCA in its name. Collations BIG5, GBK, and HKSCS are not supported either.

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.

Parent topic: Installing Oracle Instant Client Basic Light

Globalization Settings for Oracle Instant Client Basic Light

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

Single-byte

  • US7ASCII
  • WE8DEC
  • WE8ISO8859P1
  • EE8ISO8859P2
  • NEE8ISO8859P4
  • CL8ISO8859P5
  • AR8ISO8859P6
  • EL8ISO8859P7
  • IW8ISO8859P8
  • WE8ISO8859P9
  • NE8ISO8859P10
  • TH8TISASCII
  • VN8MSWIN1258
  • WE8ISO8859P15
  • BLT8ISO8859P13
  • EE8MSWIN1250
  • CL8MSWIN1251
  • EL8MSWIN1253
  • IW8MSWIN1255
  • TR8MSWIN1254
  • WE8MSWIN1252
  • BLT8MSWIN1257
  • AR8MSWIN1256

Multibyte

  • JA16EUC
  • JA16SJIS
  • JA16EUCTILDE
  • JA16SJISTILDE
  • KO16MSWIN949
  • ZHS16GBK
  • ZHT32EUC
  • ZHT16MSWIN950
  • ZHT16HKSCS

Unicode

  • UTF8
  • AL32UTF8
  • AL16UTF16 (only as NCHAR character set)

The preceding character sets, except AL16UTF16, can be specified in the NLS_LANG setting and can be the character set of a database to which the Instant Client Basic Light connects. The following character sets can also be the character set of a database to which the Instant Client Basic Light connects:

  • WE8EBCDIC37C
  • WE8EBCDIC1047

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.

Parent topic: Installing 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 RPM 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 basiclite zip file instead of the basic zip file.

Installing Oracle Instant Client Basic Light Using RPMs

To remove earlier installations and install Oracle Instant Client Basic Light using RPMs, follow the instructions in Installing Oracle Instant Client Using RPMs. However, use the basiclite packages instead of basic.

Note:

To install other packages like SQL*Plus, install the Oracle Instant Client Basic package.

Parent topic: Installing Oracle Instant Client Basic Light