Oracle Instant Client for macOS

Oracle does not release anymore full client packages for the Mac clients. Therefore, we need to use the Instant Client from:

The installation is quite simple but we need to remember that, in order to have a functional client for a DBA we would need to download three packages at least:

  • Basic Package – All files required to run OCI, OCCI, and JDBC-OCI applications
  • SQL_Plus Package – The SQL_Plus command line tool for SQL and PL/SQL queries
  • Tools Package – Includes Data Pump, SQL*Loader and Workload Replay Client

After that, the installation goes as:


$ mkdir instantclient
  cd instantclient 
$ unzip /Users/radu.parvu/Downloads/instantclient-basic-macos.x64-18.1.0.0.0.zip.download/
$ unzip /Users/radu.parvu/Downloads/instantclient-sqlplus-macos.x64-18.1.0.0.0.zip
$ unzip /Users/radu.parvu/Downloads/instantclient-tools-macos.x64-18.1.0.0.0.zip
$ cd instantclient_18_1/
$ pwd
/Users/radu.parvu/opt/instantclient/instantclient_18_1
$ mkdir -p network/admin

Add to the PATH in the .bash_profile:

export PATH=$PATH:/Users/radu.parvu/opt/instantclient/instantclient_18_1

set the environment variable TNS_ADMIN:

export TNS_ADMIN=/Users/radu.parvu/opt/instantclient/instantclient_18_1/network/admin

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