title: Oracle C++ connection without installing the Oracle client or instant client
body: <p>I've used some Oracle tools which do not require any installation of the Oracle client or instant client, require no modification of paths, or setup of ODBC data sources, or tnsnames.ora files.</p>
  
  <p>I would like to know how this is done. For example, oracmd (<a href="http://www.withdata.com/oracmd.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.withdata.com/oracmd.html</a>) connects to Oracle without any additional client tools. So we know it's possible.</p>
  
  <p>Basically I would like to create an R package which can read a SQL file and take the ip address, port and SID/Service Name as arguments and return the data. The only installation necessary is to install the R package. I would prefer free/open source license to distribute the package.</p>
  
  <p>I was able to build an R package to do this using JDBC without a client, but the performance was terrible for data sets of > 1000 rows. I am looking for something better than JDBC.</p>