Background

BIOVIA Direct includes a set of command line tools like 'importSDFile' or 'exportRDFile' that allow batch-handling of larger amount of chemical data. For details on these command line tools please consult the BIOVIA Direct Administration Guide. Mainly due to security guidelines, Direct power users or even Direct application owners are often not allowed to login to the Oracle server and run command line tools. This post describes a method to run the Direct command line tools from a remote machine.

Solution 

In the following, 'Oracle server' refers to the machine that runs the Oracle database and has BIOVIA Direct installed, and 'remote machine' refers to the machine on which you want to execute the BIOVIA Direct command line tool. In general, the remote machine can run any server operating system that is supported by the Direct version that runs on the Oracle server; the platforms (Linux or Windows) on the Oracle server and the remote machine can be different. The remote execution of the Direct command line tools are likely to work also when the remote machine runs a client operating system like Microsoft Windows 10, however, this is not formally supported. In the following instructions you are asked to install Oracle client and Direct application files to the remote machine. Accordingly, the files to be downloaded and installed must match the platform of the remote machine.  

1) Download the Basic Package ZIP file of the 64bit Oracle Instant Client that matches the Oracle version on the Oracle server. Unpack the Basic Package into a directory of the remote client, e.g. /opt/BIOVIA/Direct_commandline_tools on the Linux platform or C:\BIOVIA\Direct_commandline_tools on the Windows platform. 

2) Next, copy the BIOVIA Direct application files into the same directory into which you copied the Oracle Instant Client files in step. There are two ways to get the BIOVIA Direct application files. 

If the remote machine is running on the same platform as the Oracle server, you can simply copy the content of the 'bin19' folder of the BIOVIA Direct installation directory on the Oracle server, including all of its subfolders. If the Oracle server is running Oracle 11c or 12c, copy the content of the 'bin11' or 'bin12' folder, respectively.

If the platforms of the remote machine and the Oracle server are different, you must extract the BIOVIA Direct application files from the respective 'bin' folders in the Application (G)ZIP files that are created during the BIOVIA Direct installation procedure. For details on obtaining the Application (G)ZIP files, consult the chapter 'Obtain the Direct Pre-Installation License Validation Tool and Validate the Direct License' in the BIOVIA Direct Installation and Configuration Guide for Linux or Windows, respectively. Note that you do not need to run the full Direct installation on the remote machine.

3) Verify that the remote machine has all OS libraries required by BIOVIA Direct and the Oracle Instant Client. The OS libraries required by BIOVIA Direct are listed in the BIOVIA Direct System Requirements document.

4) On the remote machine, create a file named tnsnames.ora that includes a TNSALIAS to the Oracle database that you want to access through the BIOVIA Direct command line tools. For details on creating a TNSALIAS entry consult the Oracle documentation or you Oracle DBA.

5) Open a command line on the remote machine and switch to the directory into which you copied the BIOVIA Direct application files and the Oracle Instant Client files. You can now execute the Direct command line tools from this directory. Make sure that you add the TNSALIAS defined in step 4 to the connection information in the call of the command line tool. On the Linux platform, make sure that the command line tools are marked as executable.