Difference Between Oracle lnstant Client and Oracle Client

Question

What is the Difference Between Oracle lnstant Client and Oracle Client ? Could you explain me ? Thanks

Answer 1

1. Oracle client comes with an installer and a lot of executable like sqlplus, tnsping, it's complete and huge.

2. Oracle Instant client is a basic lightweight client which can be unzipped in a location without any installation, it contains only the communication layer to be able to connect to oracle. It can be extended by adding for example sqlplus which ships as a separate executable. When using Instant Client, just unzip it to a location, set your ORACLE_HOME environment variable to this location and you are ready to go.