If your application uses Oracle database, you will need to install the appropriate version of Oracle Client in your local machine. As this software keeps being updated, you may find yourself trying to uninstall old versions from your system after a while. The question is that how to find which versions of Oracle Client you have in Windows?
Finding out which Oracle Client you installed it’s not straightforward. You can check PATH variables or run some commands in SQLPLUS or TNSPING. Another approach is using OPatch Utility. In this post, I will talk about a much easier way to Oracle Client versions.
Oracle Client versions
Simply run the query below in the Command Prompt. It will call PowerShell first and search for oraclient*.dll files (Asterisk is used to represent the number such as 10, 11 or 12). Once the query is executed, a nicely formatted table will be displayed with the versions and their paths.
powershell "gci C:\,D:\ -recurse -filter 'oraclient*.dll' -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | %{ $_.VersionInfo } | ft -Property FileVersion, FileName -AutoSize"
Make sure to add (or remove) hard disk drives if your system has more or less than 2 drives (C: and D:). In the command, only C: and D: drives are searched.
Alternative Way
You can use the query below in SQL Developer to list the versions of the client libraries used. Please note that this query may list the version which is used by SQL Developer only.
SELECT
DISTINCT
s.client_version
FROM
v$session_connect_info s
WHERE
s.sid = SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV', 'SID');
Another approach is that querying v$version variable: select * from v$version