How does your Oracle ODBC driver load the Oracle client?

The Oracle client-based version of our Oracle ODBC driver is compatible with either the full version of the Oracle client or the more lightweight Instant Client.

If you set the ORACLE_HOME environment variable on the machine where you install the Oracle ODBC driver, it will attempt to load the full version of the Oracle client and will look for the client under the directory pointed to by ORACLE_HOME.

If you want to use our driver with the Instant Client, set LD_LIBRARY_PATH (or SHLIB_PATH or LIBPATH for non-Linux platforms) rather than ORACLE_HOME. The Oracle ODBC driver will attempt to load the Instant Client from the directory pointed to by LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

If want to use the full Oracle client but do not want to set ORACLE_HOME, for example, because you are using a 32-bit version of the Oracle client that is on the same machine as a 64-bit version of the Oracle database, you can set EASYSOFT_ORACLE_LIBS instead. Specify the full pathname of the Oracle client you want to use. For example:

EASYSOFT_ORACLE_LIBS = /data/oracle/app/oracle/12.2.0.1/client32/libclntsh.so.12.1
export EASYSOFT_ORACLE_LIBS

Alternatively, if using the Oracle client is problematic and you do not need the features that the OCI layer provides, you can use the non-OCI version of our Oracle ODBC driver, which does not use the Oracle client libraries.