How To Consolidate Oracle Naming Contexts

Oracle Net Services provides name service resolution for Oracle database clients when looking up the connect string for a target database.  Customers that have used Net Services for a long time may have accumulated a large number of Oracle contexts (a.k.a. directory service base suffixes) over time. Some customers have expressed an interest in consolidating all of the databases into a single naming context. For example, consider a customer that has databases in the following naming contexts:

• DC=myco,DC=com
• DC=corp,DC=myco,DC=com
• DC=dev,DC=myco,DC=com
• DC=acquiredco,DC=com

The customer would like to consolidate all of these naming contexts into a unified naming context of "DC=myco,DC=com" for all database entries.  In the past, this could be accomplished through a variety of means but all were fraught with a certain degree of risk and complications.  However, there is a new manage_tns tool available that handles this use case quite effortlessly.  Here is how to accomplish this objective in seven steps with manage_tns:

Step 1: Install python3-ldap and the manage_tns tool on to a Linux host

$ sudo install python3-ldap
$ cd /u01
$ curl -so manage_tns.sh https://raw.githubusercontent.com/oudlabs/manage_tns/refs/heads/main/manage_tns.sh
$ chmod 0700 manage_tns.sh

Step 2: Backup the primary naming context

$ /u01/manage_tns.sh export -h <dshost> -p <ldaps_port> -f tnsnames.ora --suffix "DC=myco,DC=com"

Step 3: Export the database entries from all other naming contexts

$ /u01/manage_tns.sh export -h <dshost> -p <ldaps_port> -f tnsnames-corp.ora --suffix "DC=corp,DC=myco,DC=com"

$ /u01/manage_tns.sh export -h <dshost> -p <ldaps_port>  -f tnsnames-dev.ora --suffix "DC=dev,DC=myco,DC=com"

$ /u01/manage_tns.sh export -h <dshost> -p <ldaps_port>  -f tnsnames-other.ora --suffix "DC=acquiredco,DC=com"

Step 4: Load the exported database entries into the primary naming context

$ /u01/manage_tns.sh load -h <dshost> -p <ldaps_port> -D <tns_admin_dn> -f tnsnames-corp.ora --suffix "DC=myco,DC=com"

$ /u01/manage_tns.sh load -h <dshost> -p <ldaps_port> -D <tns_admin_dn> -f tnsnames-dev.ora --suffix "DC=myco,DC=com"

$ /u01/manage_tns.sh load -h <dshost> -p <ldaps_port> -D <tns_admin_dn> -f tnsnames-other.ora --suffix "DC=myco,DC=com"

Step 5: Update client references to the new naming context in ldap.ora and JDBC connect lookups

Example of ldap.ora:

DEFAULT_ADMIN_CONTEXT = "DC=myco,DC=com"

Example of jdbc reference:

"jdbc:oracle:thin:@ldaps:<ds_host>:<ldaps_port>/<db_alias>,cn=OracleContext,DC=myco,DC=com"

Step 6: Obtain a list of all of the database entries from the legacy naming context

$ /u01/manage_tns.sh list -h <dshost> -p <ldaps_port> --suffix "DC=acquiredco,DC=com"

Step 7: Un-register database entries from the old contexts once you are certain that clients are no long referencing the old contexts

$ /u01/manage_tns.sh unregister -n <db_alias> -h <dshost> -p <ldaps_port> -f tnsnames-corp.ora --suffix "DC=corp,DC=myco,DC=com"

I hope you found this information helpful and insightful.

Blessings!