Oracle Instant Client - Free tools and libraries for connecting to Oracle Database

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Oracle Instant Client

Free, light-weight, and easily installed Oracle Database tools, libraries and SDKs for building and connecting applications to an Oracle Database instance.

Oracle Instant Client enables applications to connect to a local or remote Oracle Database for development and production deployment. The Instant Client libraries provide the necessary network connectivity, as well as basic and high end data features, to make full use of Oracle Database. It underlies the Oracle APIs of popular languages and environments including Node.js, Python and PHP, as well as providing access for OCI, OCCI, JDBC, ODBC and Pro*C applications. Tools included in Instant Client, such as SQL*Plus and Oracle Data Pump, provide quick and convenient data access.

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Instant Client on Oracle Cloud

Downloads

Instant Client 18.3 is available for Linux and SPARC

Instant Client 18.3 packages for Linux are available from the Downloads tab. Some highlights are discussed here.

Instant Client is available on the Docker Store

A Docker image with the Basic, SDK and SQL*Plus packages is available on the Docker Store or from the Oracle Container Registry.

Instant Client Features

Free to download, deploy and distribute
Small footprint
ZIPs available for quick, one-step install
RPM Packages also available for Linux
Same libraries as full Oracle Database or Oracle Client
Includes tools such as SQL*Plus and Data Pump
Widely used and tested.

Instant Client Packages

Instant Client Package	Description	References
Basic	All files required to run OCI, OCCI, ODBC, and JDBC-OCI applications for Oracle Database	OCI OCCI JDBC-OCI
Basic Light	Smaller version of the Basic package, with only English error messages and Unicode, ASCII, and Western European character set support	OCI OCCI JDBC-OCI
SDK	Additional header files and an example makefile for developing OCI and OCCI applications
SQL*Plus	Additional package providing the SQL*Plus command-line tool for executing SQL and PL/SQL statements and scripts	SQL*Plus
Tools	Additional tools including Data Pump, SQL*Loader and Workload Replay Client	Data Pump and SQL*Loader WRC
ODBC	Additional libraries providing ODBC	ODBC
Precompilers	Additional tools and libraries providing the ProC and ProCOBOL precompilers	ProC ProCOBOL
JDBC-OCI Supplement	Additional libraries to support Internationalization	JDBC-OCI