Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Connection string" in English language version.
The TNS connection string tells the Oracle software how to connect to the remote database. Generally, the client software [...] will read a file called tnsnames.ora. This is a plaint-text configuration file commonly found in the [ORACLE_HOME]\network\admin directory ([ORACLE_HOME] represents the full path to your Oracle installation directory).LOCAL [:] Windows environment variable to specify a connection string. Performs the same function as TWO_TASK on UNIX.