Oracle
From Rory.wiki
Instant Client
Getting the instant client working is a pre-requisite of most tools which make use of Oracle TNS connections, as most of them use the OCI libraries provided by Oracle.
The Instant Client can be downloaded from the Oracle Technology Network and is available as a series of zip files. In most cases the basic package + the sqlplus package will do the job, with the SDK one needed for dev. libraries.
windows
Per this post once you've got the client in place (it comes as a series of zip files), you'll need to add some environment variables.
Adding the root directory of the instant client install (eg, c:\oracle\instantclient_11_2) to the PATH and also as an evironment variable TNS_ADMIN, should help.
Links & Resources
startup and shutdown scripts for Oracle on Linux
