ORA-12203 TNS:unable to connect to destination

[TrevJones]

We run some sql scripts on NT through a scheduler running batch files. This has been working fine. However, we have discovered that if the sqlplus can not connect to the server it will report the above error, but sqlplus itself will not pass the error code back. It exits with a Zero, after trying to put in a valid username/password, and our scripts think that the job has worked.

Does anyone have any ideas how we can get it to pass back the error or do a quick check to see if the database is up?

Thanks

 

[lewisp]

tnsping will tell you if a database is available but I dont know if it passes back a return code.

tnsping <SID>