Does Oracle have any plans on creating a standalone python driver

Thanks cj for the quick response and an answer that helped solve my problem.  Now that I know exactly what it took to fix it I have

a better perspective on how the cx_Oracle and instantclient have to be setup.  So for the sake of any other readers who might have

a similar problem I'm going to expand on cj's answer and give the exact details that I had to do.

1. the description in step 3 on this page: https://oracle.github.io/odpi/doc/installation.html#macos

  did not work in my case.  For one thing on my MAC there is no such directory ~/lib.  There is however a

  /Library directory off of the root folder.  But putting a symlink there did not fix the problem either.

2. the crux of the issue is that the symlink must be setup correctly and in a location that the running python code can find it:

   a. in the python code at the point when it calls conn = cx_Oracle.connect('usr/[email protected]//host:port:schema'), there will be a call

   made inside the cx_Oracle or instantclient code like this:  dlopen(libclntsh.dylib, 1) and thus the python interpreter must be able to

   find libclntsh.dylib some how at runtime;

   b. so far the only way I could get this to work is to create a symlink in the python project root directory where the python

     app is running.  And the symlink must be named libclntsh.dylib and it must point to the full-path-location of the symlink

     that comes bundled with instantclient;

As an example: suppose you have

-a python project in subdirectory /Users/bob/mypyproj

-and you have a python "script" file called orclconn.py like this: /Users/bob/mypyproj/orclconn.py

and within orclconn.py it's going to connect to Oracle database.

-and you unzipped the instantclient to /Users/bob/instantclient_19_3

    then in the project root create a symlink file like this:

/Users/bob/mypyproj/libclntsh.dylib

    and this symlink must point to the symlink file where you unzipped the instantclient here

/Users/bob/instantclient_19_3/libclntsh.dylib

    (that symlink file will in turn point to the actual file, something like /Users/bob/instantclient_19_3/libclntsh.dylib.19.1)

now when you run the python script IN THE directory where orclconn.py is (your python program) then the call to dlopen(libclntsh.dylib, 1)

will work.

So a couple followup thoughts:

1. I realize that my solution may not be ideal for some people because it requires creating a new symlink

in every directory where you're going to run a python program from.  But like I said, I still haven't figured out a "global" location

to create a symlink that works, though I've tried to put it in /Library without success.  Having said that I actually prefer not to

muddy up global environment settings any more that I have to and prefer this anyway.

2. I'm going to amend my original post suggestion above: Oracle does not necessarily need to create a "standalone" python driver because this thin

client is fine.  Perhaps a little better explanation of how to set it up and how it works on the installation web page above would be nice.

I do understand what '~' means.  It is the user's "home" directory on (Linux and Mac).

I went ahead and created the ~/lib subdirectory as you suggested.

And then I created the symlink file in that directory and removed it from my python project root directory.

And low and behold it worked.  So apparently the cx_Oracle code is specifically looking in ~/lib for the symlink named libclntsh.dylib.

I.e. it'll look for this symlink at runtime: ~/lib/libclntsh.dylib.  Is that correct?

I'll explain where I went wrong:

1. my knowledge of symlinks was minimal and I took it for granted and ended up incorrectly creating the symlinks.  I tried creating

  the symlink in just about every possible permutation except for the ONE correct way to do it!  For example I did both of these:

  -INCORRECT: created a symlink ~/lib (where lib was a symlink file not a directory);

  -INCORRECT: I also created symlinks in various locations but I pointed it to the instantclient subdirectory NOT the lbclntsh.dylib file WITHIN the

  instantclient subdirectory.

2. on a MAC I think (correct me if I'm wrong) the special directories are slightly different than most Linux in regards to

   lib vs Library.  I.e. I don't think that ~/lib on a MAC is considered a special subdirectory whereas it IS on most other Linux.

Now here's what I'd suggest for documentation improvements: (tell the user to review their knowledge of symlinks like this):

1. I'd recommend reviewing your knowledge of symlinks on Linux/MAC-OS (they work the same on both).  In particular understand that:

   1. a symlink IS a file and thus it can have any name just like a file can have any valid filename and it can reside in any subdirectory.

   2. a symlink can point to either a file or a subdirectory.

   3. when setting up instantclient the symlink will point to a FILE not a SUBDIRECTORY.

   4. the name of the symlink needs to be 'lbclntsh.dylib' because that is what cx_Oracle will be looking for at runtime

2. Point out that if there is no directory called ~/lib then simply create one (just like you advised me above) and then put the symlink in there.

by emphasizing these points I think it'll help users avoid the mistakes I made.

Thanks again.