For development purposes and small applications I prefer using Oracle Database 10g Express Edition instead of the heavyweight Oracle Database 10g / 11g Enterprise. It can be installed and run for just 2-3 minutes but it has a small problem: by default the TNS Listener listens for connections on port 1521 from the local machine only and thus remote clients can not connect. A quick fix for this issue is to edit the LISTENER.ORA file located typically in here:
C:\oraclexe\app\oracle\product\10.2.0\server\NETWORK\ADMIN
You should change the socket bind address to 0.0.0.0. The LISTENER configuration should look like this:
Posted by nakov in blog

