I normally connect to my Oracle database at work using a connection string. Other then the obvious answer of asking the DBA what it is, using SQL Developer or some other tool can I find out what the tns listener name is. This is an excerpt from a config file in .net where i use to connect:
DATA SOURCE=myURL:port/servicename;PASSWORD=password
Best Answer
The instance's TNS name would be defined in the tnsnames.ora file on your system. When you bust that file open, you'll see something like...
The instance name (defined in the file) is really arbitrary; meaning, you can name it whatever you want. So, in the example above, I named it
MyOracleInstanceTNSName
, but I could've named it something else.In the professional world, we typically use the same name across hosts, but that's a convention. This way as we share scripts or talk about instances, we're using the same name. That's a while lot easier than remembering that Bob's "foobar" instance is the same as your "bigSexy" instance.
You can find this file in
${ORACLE_HOME}/network/admin
on most systems. You should be able to find (or define) the tnsname for the instance you're using there.