Do I need to have Oracle installed at the server that hosts the netprobe in order to use the Oracle Plug-In?

If the NetProbe is a 32-bit version then you must have a 32-bit Oracle client and for a 64-bit Netprobe, a 64-bit Oracle client. While the Oracle thin/lite client will work, in most cases it does interfere with any Java-based samplers on the same NetProbe, so we would recommend the full client installation. 

From the server that the NetProbe is on, you can access any Oracle data server that you have permission to connect to as with a normal command line Oracle client. 

To perform the full functions of the Oracle plug-in you need specific additional permissions which are detailed in the plug-in reference manual. 

The Oracle client needs to be installed and set-up in a way that allows for "sqlplus" command line connection to be made by the same user as the one running the NetProbe - this means that the database connection details (for the SID) will be available in the $ORAHOME/network/admin/tnsnames.ora file. If you are using LDAP connection profiles for Oracle then we do not directly support those but instead the whole connection section should be pasted into the Database box - this is everything between and including the parenthesis, e.g. everything except the "SID =" below.

SID = ((...) ... 
....) 

The section below outlines the steps you need to do:

1. Give the complete SID in the Database name field.
2. Try to connect to the Oracle server from the probe running in the application server that has the Oracle client installed.
3. The probe in the application server runs with the account "netprobe."
4. The account "netprobe" must have been created in the database.
5. In the netprobe account, ".bash_profile" file has to have the environment variable for ORACLE_HOME, LD_LIBRARY_PATH and the included Oracle Home path in the PATH set.

Be aware that there is a known issue, however, if you use Java-based samplers and Oracle in the same NetProbe. The Oracle client installation must be the full one and not the "instant client" which is JDBC-based and the Java libraries/classes clash.