Oracle EZCONNECT

Oracle EZCONNECT is a database connection technique that does away with the need to look up service names in tnsnames.ora when connecting via a network. It provides for connection by enhancing the original connection string format of:

CONNECT username/password@service_name

The updated format allows for the use of a connection URL to enhance the service_name:

CONNECT username/password@//host[:port][/service_name]

Where host is either the host name or IP address of the database, port is an optional port number defaulting to 1521, whilst service_name is the database service name, which defaults to the host name.

For example:

CONNECT Scott/tiger@//10.101.0.45/employee.world

A complete description of this is available on wikipedia.