Oracle Database Discussions

Good morning,

While reading some Oracle related articles on the web, I found the following:

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NTS Authentication Service must be disabled in a default installation.

Recent versions of Oracle feature SQLNET Authentication Services, but most times (especially but not only with Personal Oracle), those services are not installed. Nevertheless, the Oracle installer enables their use. This is a bug in the Oracle installer.

In the plain text file sqlnet.ora (located in the same directory as TNSNAMES.ORA, i.e. ORACLE_HOME\net80\admin or ORACLE_HOME\network\admin), you may find the following line:
SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES= (NTS)

Remove that line or prefix it with a comment sign, so that it read like this:

# SQLNET.AUTHENTICATION_SERVICES= (NTS)

Save that file. You may need to restart Oracle if it runs on the same machine. Restarting the entire machine may take longer, but it is easier to do.

PLEASE NOTE: There may be Oracle installations where the NTS Authentication Service is required. But for such installations, you can expect that the local Oracle administrator knows that it is required.
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The question is: How can I determine if the NTS authentication service is actually needed ?

Thank you for your help,

John.