Oracle Net Services provides enterprise-wide connectivity in distributed, heterogeneous computing environments. They ease the complexity of network configuration and management, maximize performance, and improve network diagnostic capabilities.

Oracle Net

Oracle Net (also known as "SQL*Net") is responsible for establishing and maintaining connections between client applications and Oracle Database. Features include simple connection syntax, load balancing, connection fail-over, network tuning, network encryption, performance management, and in-built diagnostics.

Oracle drivers and client libraries implement the Oracle Net protocol.

Oracle Net Listener

An Oracle Net Listener serves as the initial entry point to the Oracle Database for connections. Listeners act as brokers for application connections, handing off requests to an Oracle Database server. Once a connection is established, the application and server communicate directly with one another. A listener is included in a database installation. Listeners can also be installed separately.

Oracle Connection Manager

Oracle Connection Manager is an optional software component that resides on its own computer, separate from applications or Oracle Database. It is a connection proxy solution, bringing connection intelligence, security, pooling, and multiplexing capabilities to existing and new database applications. It is aware of database services and supports service-specific rule lists. It also allows network-level protocol conversion.

Oracle Net Services Tools

User interface tools and command-line utilities can be used to configure, manage, administer, and monitor Oracle Net Services. Tools include Oracle Net Configuration Assistant, Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control, Oracle Net Manager, and command-line control utilities.

Connecting to Oracle Database

Looking for how to connect to an Oracle Database from popular languages? Try these quick start guides:

Python

Node.js

JDBC

ODP.NET