I’m a big fan of the “instantclient” solution to Oracle connectivity. No more calls to “runInstaller”, no registry files on Windows, it is just download-unzip-go.
That makes installation a breeze, it makes upgrading a breeze. In my view, the experience is all positive.
However, I’ve had people lament the omission of the “tnsping” command in the instantclient libraries.
My recommendation for that is simple. Simply download recent versions of the tools and you’re done!
In SQLcl, you can perform tnsping from within the tool
And in the latest SQLPlus in the instantclient, the “ping” command does the job.
The reason there is not a “tnsping” is … you don’t need one anymore.