Hugo Estrada's House of Wonder

Yesterday I had the joy of having the Oracle 11g install majorly mislead me. Even though it couldn't really work on my windows computer due to it having a dhcp ip, the installer gave me a "warning" that got buried in their amazingly small viewing area, and it let me continue the install. Even better, by letting me log into the db in SQL*Plus, it totally faked me out into believing that the installation was successful. It was only when I tried to work with it in .net that i started getting the annoying tns not running error.

So I search for to see what the problem is, and there are tons of posts in the oracle forums on this error, everyone with a different problem and solution. I dutifully try the different solutions, I get it to "work" according to the solutions, i.e, I get the hellish service to actually run, and yet it still won't work in .net.

And this is RIGHT AFTER INSTALLATION, WHEN THE DAMN THING SHOULD WORK.

So I decided to uninstall and install again. While installing again, I noticed that I got "warning" telling me in a weak worded way that stuff may happen in dhcp if I go ahead with the installation. The stupid feedback should read: "It WON'T WORK. Install the freaking Microsoft loopback Adapter First."

Fortunately this actually fixed the problem.

I don't know if Oracle just likes to prank developers, or if this is some kind of hazing to join the Oracle crowd. This error message is so common and is triggered by so many things that the desperate posts of people are received with a massive yawn by the regulars who tell you to search through their archives to find the solution.

And I guess that their ridiculously small viewing windows at the prerequisite check of the installer, which one cannot adjust, is their way of stating to the world that Oracle is a totally back-end development shop? Do they put interns to create the install GUIs?

I am still angry, and the best part of this is that I actually rested and went to sleep before posting this.