Re: Problem with accesing Oracle from plperlu functionwhen using remote pg client.

Finally, my low-level Oracle knowledge does benefit Postgres :)

It's a TNS parsing error due to a combination of Oracle's use of a Lispish s-expression-like name-value pair format and Postgres' process listing format for remote connections. 

On connection, the Oracle client sends the current application name to the Oracle server (which is listed in the V$SESSION view); in the case of Postgres, the program name is the current backend process name text.  Because Oracle picks up Postgres' backend text, "postgres: www postgres 192.168.1.1(13243)", the (13243) screws up Oracle's TNS parser which prevents it from resolving the connection.  This doesn't happen when you're connected to PG locally, because the backend text is, "postgres: www postgres [local]".

The solution to this is to change the following line in src/backend/postmaster/postmaster.c:

remote_port[0] == '\0' ? "%s" : "%s(%s)"

TO

remote_port[0] == '\0' ? "%s" : "%s[%s]"
OR
remote_port[0] == '\0' ? "%s" : "%s:%s"

Which I would prefer as a nice change to make overall.

--
Jonah H. Harris, Senior DBA
myYearbook.com