Question

I have Visual Studio 2008 running from Windows XP. Our server is Windows 2003 Server.

On a different server, there is an Oracle database we want to connect to.

I’ve made the connection work from my local VS instance using system.data.OracleClient with the following code:

Dim oradb As String = "Data Source=(DESCRIPTION=" _
                           + "(ADDRESS_LIST=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)" _
                           + "(HOST=ourHostaHere(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVER=DEDICATED)" _
                           + "(SERVICE_NAME=serviceNameHere)));" _
                           + "User Id=userIdHere;Password=passwordHere;"
Using con As New OracleConnection(oradb)
Dim command As New OracleCommand("", con)
command.Connection.Open()
command.Connection.Close()

But… when put on our server and attempting to establish the DB connection, the following error is thrown
“System.Data.OracleClient requires Oracle client software version 8.1.7 or greater.”

After doing some research, we found the following link which explains that using system.data.OracleClient is deprecated… and to use ODP.NET:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/dotnet/index-085703.html

We do not have oracle on our windows 2003 server.

---

What do i need to do, to get my local Visual Studio 2008 project to connect to the oracle database?

What do i need to do, to get our server to allow the published .NET page to connect to the oracle database?

thank you for any help with this!!

Answer 1

Step 1: Install Oracle10g Release 2 ODAC and Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio .NET
http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/tech/dotnet/utilsoft.html

Step 2: Set Oracle_Home environment. For example: Set Oracle_Home = C:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1
Step 3: Create sqlnet.ora and tnsnames.ora files under: \NETWORK\ADMIN To setup connection, you can use tnsping to test it. For example: tnsping your_oracle_service
Step 4: Add reference Oracle.DataAccess.dll

Check this link for more info.
http://forums.asp.net/t/1146342.aspx/1

Hope it helps.