I’m studying Oracle and I would like to understand the uniqueness or constrains when assigning these parameters.
Suppose a machine with a single OS (host) and 2 different databases (physical). Are they forced to use different db_name in following cases?
- They share ORACLE_HOME
- They don’t share ORACLE_HOME
How is this related when db_unique_name enters in the game? What’s the point?
So far reading in Forums and offical Docs I got the following assumption :
EDITED
This is what created me confusion: http://www.mail-archive.com/oracle-l@fatcity.com/msg10241.html
Then, you could have following situations:
-
Repeated DB_NAME is not possible within the same ORACLE_HOME (no matter OS and SID) for the DB_NAME is stenciled onto the files for that DB. There are 2 exceptions (Parallel Server/RAC though they are indeed different instances of the same database, and Primary-Standby systems, where need a common DB_NAME and Oracle provides us with the DB_UNIQUE_NAME mechanism)
-
For different ORACLE_HOMEs, it is possible as each installation does not see the other and they don’t conflict when sharing DB_NAME, but is strongly undesirable. Besides, on Windows, every instance is mapped to a service OracleService%SID%, so that makes impossible to have two different SIDs on the same OS, even if an instance ID is defined as ORACLE_HOME + ORACLE_SID. But as by default (and it’s an ORACLE recommendation for conventional setups) DB_NAME = SID, even in different ORACLE_HOME, 2 databases in Windows are likely to fail due to a SID default name that is common (so the second service cannot be created).
… but more authoritative answers are still welcome!