Mac Forum / Applications / Virtual PC / December 2004

I am a new user of VPC. I have a couple of products I use which only
run on Windows so I use VPC.  One of these products talks to Oracle
databases. If the Oracle database is on some remote client then
everything works, no problem.

I also have an Oracle 10g database running on the same MAC as VPC and
I am struggling to make the conenction work. The Oracle database on
the mac runs fine and does all it should (jDeveloper, SQLPlus etc all
work well on the MAC and the listener starts and runs and I can
connect to the database from other user accounts created on the MAC).

I have downloaded "instant client for windows XP" from Oracle and
installed it and it works. I have configured a set up file
(tnsnames.ora) which maps the IP address and port of the Oracle
database against a database name. This works because I can use SQLPlus
from the DOS prompt on VPC to connect to a remote server running
Oracle. However, when I put in the IP address of my MAC I get an error
message that no Oracle listener is running, so it finds the IP address
but doesn't see Oracle at that address.

So question is:   is the IP address of my MAC (127.0.0.1) being copied
by VPC so that when I ping 127.0.0.1 (from the DOS prompt) I am
actually pinging the VPC machine and not the host MAC?? That would
explain why it thinks there is no listener. So how do I give the VPC
it's own IP address so that I can be sure I see the MAC on IP address
127.0.0.1 ???

I think my question is erally about getting VPC to see an IP address
as the host MAC and not as itself.  Any help appreciated.