>>The information on the right side of the equal sign would come from the Oracle DBA. The connect string on the left side of the equal sign is arbitrary.
>
>I sort of am the dba, the system was set up by a real dba but he's gone. Can you tell me exactly where to find this thing?

Looking at my example:

MyDbName = 
 (DESCRIPTION =
   (ADDRESS_LIST =
     (ADDRESS =
       (COMMUNITY = TCP.DOMAIN.GOV)
       (PROTOCOL = TCP)
       (HOST = 999.99.999.99)
       (PORT = 1234)
     )
   )
   (CONNECT_DATA = 
     (SID = sidw)
   )
 )

Determining the Community, Host and Port depends on the platform Oracle is running on -- Unix, NT, Novell. The system administrator should be of help in providing that information. I am not going to be of much help there because I am not that person where I work. I depend on my SAs to provide this info to me. As for the SID, this is the Oracle instance name found in the Oracle startup files. I do not remember what they are called and do not have access to our Oracle server from here. If you are still in a bind, I can let you know Monday when I get back to my office. These files can be found somewhere in the ORACLE_HOME path on the Server.