Sometimes it is handy to have an Oracle client on your USB stick immediately ready to use without prior installation. Oracle has a solution - the instant client. But what if you need more than just SQLPlus, for example exp/imp or tnsping... I've found simple aswer for this - Oracle XE.
Oracle home of Windows 64bit XE installation is just little bit more than 400Mb and when you remove bin\oracle.exe (140Mb) and rdbms\admin folder (54Mb), you'll have 11G Oracle client with sqlplus, tnsping, exp/imp, datapump and other tools all together around 200Mb. Not bad, i think. Put it on your usb stick, for example in F:\XP_CLIENT folder.
Plug in it to the computer with no Oracle software, open cmd:
[pre class="brush:text" title="cmd.exe"]
set ORACLE_HOME=F:\XP_CLIENT
set PATH=%ORACLE_HOME%\bin;%PATH%[/pre]and enjoy your exp/imp/sqlplus/tnsping/whatever
Links:
Update: imp/exp and impdp/expdp are included in the Oracle Instant Client 12.2 tools package.
