Setting global_names parameter.

Question

Greetings,

My company uses Peoplesoft for its financials and HR. Our implementation is on Oracle databases. Setting global_names = TRUE forces you to name your database link the same as the target. My question is does anyone know the ramification of setting global_names to false in the init.ora parameter file?

More specifically, I want one of our environments (global_names = true) to have a database link called PRODLINK and it will point to a production HR database. Another environment (where global_names = false) will also have a link called PRODLINK but it will point to a non-production database. To further complicate it, one database environment is at Oracle 9.2 while the other is at Oracle 10.2

I have searched for an answer for this but can't find one. Thanks in advance for your any help/advice you can offer up.

J.C.

Answer 1

The upside of having global_names=TRUE is simply that it forces you to use names for database links that indicate clearly what database they connect to. Setting it to FALSE simply removes this restriction; the downside is that it will allow you to make links with names that could be confusing. In the perverse case, if you had databases A, B, and C, you could create a link in A called "B" but pointing to C.

You could also consider it a security issue, in that setting global_names=FALSE makes it slightly possible that someone could maliciously change the definition of a link, causing either inappropriate access or data damage. I can't think of a specific scenario for this though.

Overall, there isn't a big downside to setting it FALSE. However, there are a couple of other options you could consider.

One is to keep the global setting TRUE but reset it to FALSE at a session level in the code that needs it. We do this at my site because there is only one application that requires the use of "incorrectly" named links. This method ensures that anyone using the link interactively or writing code that uses it will be reminded that the name does not match the destination.

Another is to keep global_names=TRUE, so the environments use different link names, but make the link name a parameter or configuration option in your code. For instance, if you have scripts that build PL/SQL packages, you could make the link name a parameter of the script.