Pl/Sql Developer under Wine

This week I installed Pl/Sql Developer under wine. It was pretty easy. To have it working you need to install an Oracle Instant client. Probably you could install a complete Oracle Client, but the Instant Client will do and it just gives you enough to run Pl/Sql developer.

I unzipped the 10gR2 instant client (Windows 32-bit) into /home/makker/.wine/drive_c/oracle/product/instantclient_10_2.
I also put the sql-plus addendum there, but that did not work.
Then you place a valid tnsnames.ora in the subdirectory /home/makker/.wine/drive_c/oracle/product/instantclient_10_2/Network/Admin.

Install Pl/Sql developer (I just ran the installer under wine). When starting Pl/Sql developer you first have to go to the preferences and then the connection part. (menu=> tools => preferences). There you have to point Pl/Sql developer to your instant client in a windows way: C:\oracle\product\instantclient_10_2\oci.dll. After doing that, restart Pl/Sql Developer. Then it will load the oci.dll.

Then, provided that you have a database running and a valid tnsnames.ora you can connect to your database. In my case the connection to my 11g database in the VM is very, very slow. I haven't figured out yet what causes it. But I got the same behaviour using SqlDeveloper.

I'm very pleased having Pl/Sql developer running under Linux. There are however a few points to figure out and/or improve:

• Buttons in the button bar are not shown.
• Some features just don't work, like the macro-recorder.
• Sometimes when switching applications, the Pl/Sql developer pane is not repainted correctly or at all. I have to play with switch "shade" (right-click in the taskbar) on and of, to get Pl/Sql Developer shown again.

But for me Pl/sql developer is most productive tool for the job. So I accept these "instabilities" under wine.