The Oracle Network Manager is a poorly named tool; it does not perform network management at all. Rather, it is a tool provided by Oracle to configure the various components of Oracle’s networking software.

Oracle networks can be very complex, often with servers running on various operating systems, and with multiple network topologies running different protocols and frequently utilizing WAN technologies to implement geographically dispersed networks. In such complex networks, change is often the norm, and since detailed information about the composition of most components of the network must be made available to Oracle products in various parameter files, it would be difficult indeed to keep all network parameter files up to date.

Network Manager was developed and bundled with Oracle7 to help handle this network complexity and to simplify the DBA’s job of configuring and maintaining an Oracle network. Network Manager is a GUI tool that you can use to create, change, and distribute the required Oracle parameter files.

It is important to know that Network Manager was originally developed to run under Windows 3.1, and while it runs on Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT clients, it is not installed with the normal Oracle installer on those platforms. Rather, you must navigate to the WINDOWSINSTALL directory on the Oracle client installation CD-ROM, then run ORAINST to install Network Manager. The resulting executable will be found in the ORAWIN BIN directory on the client, rather than in the expected ORAWIN95 directory.

Although Network Manager can be used to configure a network running Oracle8 and Net8, Oracle is now shipping a new configuration product called the Net8 Assistant that replaces Network Manager for Oracle8 installations.