Toolset for mastering tnsnames.ora

tnsmaster's goal is to be the Swiss army knife for creating and maintaining tnsname.ora files.

• Syntax verification

  • check for correct syntax before rollout

• Semantic verification assistance

  • create and extract easy-to-test components that let you connect easily to each service node (Dataguard, RAC) directly

• Apply different styles to existing tnsnames.ora

  • consistent upper/lower cases of keywords or values
  • neat indentation
  • transform entries to one line per alias or alias list for easy scripting and copy/pasting to application server configurations

• To format a tnsnames.ora file with default settings:

  python3 formatter.py path/to/tnsnames.ora

  A neat indented tnsnnames.ora will be printed to stdout.

• To extract all aliases from a tnsnames.ora:

  python3 aliases.py path/to/tnsnames.ora

  All aliases will be printed to stdout.

Consider this address list of a tnsnames.ora file:

...
        (load_balance=yes)
        (address_list=
            (address=(protocol=tcp)(host=host1.domain.foo)(port=1522))
            (address=(protocol=tcp)(host=host2.domain.foo)(port=1524))
            (address=(protocol=tcp)(host=host3.someotherdomain.foo)(port=1522))
            (address=(protocol=tcp)(host=host1.someotherdomain.foo)(port=9210))
            (address=(protocol=tcp)(host=host2.farawaydomain.foo)(port=1522))
        )
...

It is hard to test if all connections are correct and the destination can be reached, because the client will choose an address randomly. tnsmaster will create a single tnsnames file for each address. You can now connect to this specific destination and test if it is reachable.