Question

I need to connect to a Oracle DB (external) through Visual Studio 2010. But I dont want to install Oracle on my machine.
In my project I referenced: System.Data.OracleClient. But its not fulfilling the need.
I have an “Oracle SQL Developer IDE” in which I run SQL queries against oracle db.

I have this code so far:

 private static string GetConnectionString()
    {
        String connString = "host= serverName;database=myDatabase;uid=userName;pwd=passWord";
        return connString;
    }

 private static void ConnectingToOracle()
    {
        string connectionString = GetConnectionString();
        using (OracleConnection connection = new OracleConnection())
        {
            connection.ConnectionString = connectionString;
            connection.Open();
            Console.WriteLine("State: {0}", connection.State);
            Console.WriteLine("ConnectionString: {0}",
                              connection.ConnectionString);

            OracleCommand command = connection.CreateCommand();
            string sql = "SELECT * FROM myTableName";
            command.CommandText = sql;

            OracleDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader();
            while (reader.Read())
            {
                string myField = (string)reader["MYFIELD"];
                Console.WriteLine(myField);
            }
        }
    }

So far I read these blogs:

http://st-curriculum.oracle.com/tutorial/DBXETutorial/index.htm

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kaevans/archive/2009/07/18/connecting-to-oracle-from-visual-studio.aspx

So far I have not downloaded anything from Oracle. What steps should I take to make this happen?

Answer 1

First off you need to download and install ODP from this site
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/dotnet/index-085163.html

After installation add a reference of the assembly Oracle.DataAccess.dll.

Your are good to go after this.

using System; 
using Oracle.DataAccess.Client; 

class OraTest
{ 
    OracleConnection con; 
    void Connect() 
    { 
        con = new OracleConnection(); 
        con.ConnectionString = "User Id=<username>;Password=<password>;Data Source=<datasource>"; 
        con.Open(); 
        Console.WriteLine("Connected to Oracle" + con.ServerVersion); 
    }

    void Close() 
    {
        con.Close(); 
        con.Dispose(); 
    } 

    static void Main() 
    { 
        OraTest ot= new OraTest(); 
        ot.Connect(); 
        ot.Close(); 
    } 
}