Hi,

what I've done far time ago when working with Oracle is the following:

my $db_name = 'SOMEDATABASE';
my $datasource = "dbi:Oracle:$db_name"; 
my $dbh = DBI->connect($datasource, $dbuser, $dbpasswd);
[download]

and SOMEDATABASE is a name in TNSNAMES.ORA. Therein it is defined how and to whom a connection is made when using this name. E.g. with a RAC-Cluster having several listeners and severals nodes all is done via this indirection. I'm pretty sure that the database stuff should have a TNSNAMES configuration for other client software too.

When going this way it's transparent to the Perl program where the database is hosted.

Regards
McA