IFILE path incorrectly appended to CONFIG_DIR

[GlastokTV]

1. What versions are you using?

I am using oracledb==3.4.2 in thin mode.

My Oracle Database version is 19.29.0.0.0 (Enterprise 19c).

My platform is as follows

import sys
import platform

print("platform.platform:", platform.platform())
print("sys.maxsize > 2**32:", sys.maxsize > 2**32)
print("platform.python_version:", platform.python_version())

> platform.platform: Windows-11-10.0.26100-SP0
> sys.maxsize > 2**32: True
> platform.python_version: 3.14.4

2. Is it an error or a hang or a crash?

It is an error

3. What error(s) or behavior you are seeing?

The error happens when establishing a connection using a TNSNAMES file that contains an IFILE directive and the config_dir parameter is explicitely passed.

Assuming config_dir='C:/Oracle/12.1.0/Client_lite/NETWORK/ADMIN' and IFILE="Q:\WAPPL\Ora11g\client_1\network\Admin\tnsnames.ora" this is the output I get.

DPY-4026: file 'C:/Oracle/12.1.0/Client_lite/NETWORK/ADMIN\"Q:\WAPPL\Ora11g\client_1\network\Admin\tnsnames.ora"' is missing or unreadable

[WinError 123] The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect: 'C:/Oracle/12.1.0/Client_lite/NETWORK/ADMIN\\"Q:\\WAPPL\\Ora11g\\client_1\\network\\Admin\\tnsnames.ora"'

4. Does your application call init_oracle_client()?

No, I use thin mode.

5. Include a runnable Python script that shows the problem.

A reproducible example would be as follows (assuming a TNSNAMES.ORA file exists and that it has the IFILE directive established as mentioned in question 3):

import oracledb

with oracledb.connect(
    user=os.environ['DB_USER'],
    password=os.environ['DB_USER_PWD'],
    dsn=os.environ['TNS_ALIAS'],
    config_dir=os.environ['TNS_ADMIN']
) as con:
    with con.cursor() as cur:
        cur.execute("SELECT * FROM v$version")
        print(cur.fetchall())

6. Expected behaviour

Considering the purpose for which the IFILE directory was created, I believe that when the user explicitely passes the config_dir, the behaviour should be to look in both directories separately, not appending one to another and assuming that is the actual directory that should be looked into.

[anthony-tuininga]

Ok, I can replicate the issue and it has to do with the fact that double quotes are surrounding the file name. This is not necessary and is not commonly used! I will adjust the code to handle this situation but if you want to get going right away you can simply remove the quotes.

[anthony-tuininga]

I have pushed a patch that should correct this issue and have initated a build from which you can download pre-built development wheels once it completes. You can also build from source if you prefer. If you can test your scenario and confirm the patch works as expected, that would be appreciated!

[GlastokTV]

Hi @anthony-tuininga, thank you for the rapid response and sorry for the delay in mine. I have tested your patch and it no longer appends the IFILE directive to the config_dir parameter, however, a problem still arises.

The TNSNAMES.ORA file I must use is managed by a central team in my company and developers only have read access. There are a lot of oracle databases to be managed and configured in my company, so there are a lot of things inside that file that do not actually represent configurations of the database me and my team work with (I do not know if this a bad practice or it is standard, that is the way they do it though). In my particular case, the IFILE directory does not exist in my computer, and thus the oracledb module raises a file not found error. Could it be possible to just issue a warning when the IFILE path is not found rather than an error?

I am under the assumption that this may happen to more people, but honestly maybe my company just manages things wierdly :)

[anthony-tuininga]

You are the first person to make a comment about this. I think it is bad design to ignore directives in a file and bad practice to depend on bugs in drivers -- although there is even a law that talks about it! :-) If your company won't fix their issues, you may have to work around it by copying the file and manipulating it directly to eliminate these issues before using it.

[GlastokTV]

@anthony-tuininga Perfectly understood, I will tlak to the team that manages the file and if they do not fix the issue I will implement a workaround, probably using the connection parameters rather than the TNSNAMES configuration :) The bug I originally mentioned is solved then. This is actually my first opened issue in Github so I do not know how to proceed now. When will this patch be applied to the module? I see the latest release is now 4.0.0 but if I remember correctly the patch was version 4.0.1.

[anthony-tuininga]

Yes, I will close this once 4.0.1 is released -- likely in a few weeks.

[cjbj]

@anthony-tuininga what is the Thick mode behavior?

[anthony-tuininga]

@cjbj, I haven't tried it myself but I suspect it happily ignores missing files (thus the reference to bad design/buggy drivers) which makes management of tnsnames.ora difficult at best. There are other differences (no detection of recursion is another buggy behavior in thick mode that springs to mind). Those needing to use thick mode can use the new (and improved!) parser by setting oracledb.defaults.thick_mode_dsn_passsthrough to False.