Unable to Resolve Connect Identifier

You may receive ORA-12154 "TNS:could not resolve the connect identifier specified" when you try to connect to a database.

This can occur when you are trying to use TimesTen Cache and Oracle Database on the same system and the TNS_ADMIN environment variable does not point to the proper tnsnames.ora file for Oracle Database. For example, you may have several instances of the Oracle Database running on a laptop.

In a production environment, you typically have TimesTen and Oracle Database running on different systems. In this case, do not reset the TNS_ADMIN environment variable to point to a tnsnames.ora file on the system where TimesTen is running. The Oracle Database client uses the TNS_ADMIN setting to resolve the connection, but the TimesTen main daemon, the cache agent, the Web server, and the replication agent are unaware of the TNS_ADMIN setting. TimesTen Cache cannot operate properly when the Oracle Database client and TimesTen use different tnsnames.ora files.

On Windows, set the TNS_ADMIN environment variable as follows:

  1. Open the Start Search, type in env and choose "Edit the system environment variables" button.
  2. Click the "Environment Variables…" button.
  3. Add or edit TNS_ADMIN as a system environment variable so that it points to the directory that contains the tnsnames.ora file that you want to use. You can include other tnsnames.ora files with the INAME command inside the tnsnames.ora file.