Add new Oracle database UI is misleading

[EBoisseauSierra]

Describe the bug

The "Oracle system ID (SID)" and "Oracle service name" part formular to set up a new Oracle database are misleading:

To Reproduce

I have a Metabase (0.33.4) install, with ojdbc7.jar driver installed as detailed in the documentation.

I want to add a connection to an Oracle database.

Say I can access the Oracle database from the server I have installed Metabase on via

sqlplus metabase/supersecurepassword@oracle.test.com:1521/CONTAINER

where CONTAINER has been set up on the database as:

ALTER SESSION SET CONTAINER = ORCLPDB1;

Plus say that the Oracle instance's SID has been defined as ORCLCDB.

Expected behavior

The way stupid-me understands the UI is that the SID is required, whereas the TNS is optional.
However, after a lot of trial and error, documentation and logs parsing, I've found that the (magic) working configuration is setting CONTAINER as "Oracle Service Name", and leaving "SID" empty:

I guess it makes sense, because these are the same details used for connecting via sqlplus… but I tried quite some time by using CONTAINER as the "SID" (because I understood this entry as required) — what obviously didn't worked.

However, using the wrong configuration below returns a misleading — and frankly mad driving — ORA-01017: invalid username/password; logon denied error.

Information about your Metabase Installation:

{
  "browser-info": {
    "language": "en-GB",
    "platform": "Linux x86_64",
    "userAgent": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:71.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/71.0",
    "vendor": ""
  },
  "system-info": {
    "java.runtime.name": "OpenJDK Runtime Environment",
    "java.runtime.version": "1.8.0_191-b12",
    "java.vendor": "Oracle Corporation",
    "java.vendor.url": "http://java.oracle.com/",
    "java.version": "1.8.0_191",
    "java.vm.name": "OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM",
    "java.vm.version": "25.191-b12",
    "os.name": "Linux",
    "os.version": "4.13.9-300.fc27.x86_64",
    "user.language": "en",
    "user.timezone": "Etc/UTC"
  },
  "metabase-info": {
    "databases": [
      "h2",
      "oracle"
    ],
    "hosting-env": "unknown",
    "application-database": "h2",
    "run-mode": "prod",
    "version": {
      "tag": "v0.33.4",
      "date": "2019-10-07",
      "branch": "release-0.33.x",
      "hash": "9559406"
    },
    "settings": {
      "report-timezone": null
    }
  }
}

Severity

Lost quite some time, and a few inches-worth of nails… but I guess it's not that severe.

[mazameli]

I've added information about this to our running Error Messages doc so that we can hopefully improve this.