What's the best way to determine which version of Oracle client I'm running?

The subject says it all: What is the best way to determine the exact version of the oracle client I'm running? Our clients are all running Windows.

I found one suggestion to run the tnsping utility, without parameters, which does display the version information. Is there a better way?

Does the client install put this information in any sort of text file?

Solution 1:

You can use the v$session_connect_info view against the current session ID (SID from the USERENV namespace in SYS_CONTEXT).

e.g.

SELECT
  DISTINCT
  s.client_version
FROM
  v$session_connect_info s
WHERE
  s.sid = SYS_CONTEXT('USERENV', 'SID');

Solution 2:

TNSPing command line will show the version. similarly, sqlPlus.exe will print its version. You can also go to the readme files in the 'relnotes' directory of your client install. Version 10.2 has a file named README_jdbc.txt, for example, which will tell you which version has been installed.