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Re: OLE DB and ODBC

From: Niall Litchfield <niall.litchfield_at_gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2006 22:02:56 +0000
Message-ID: <7765c8970602151402y16046460oc3392e1c8900c98f@mail.gmail.com>


I'll write this up on my site soon since they are such common questions.

Do I need an Oracle Client installed to use ODBC/OLEDB?

Any client application, including mid-tier applications running on application servers such as IIS, will need a set of client libraries to talk to the database with one exception only and that is java applications using the thin or wire protocol drivers. So to use any of ODBC,OLEDB,ADO.NET to connect to the Oracle database you will need to install an Oracle client. In addition starting with Oracle 9.2 you will need to ensure that the security account used to access the application has access to the client Oracle home.

Can I connect to an Oracle database from a windows client without using tnsnames.ora?

Yes, there are any number of ways. Typically to connect to an Oracle database you need a connect descriptor (which is a long string of information needed to connect to an Oracle listener and tell it what database you wish to connect to. Typically these are stored in a text file called tnsnames.ora in ORACLE_HOME and associated with an easy to remember alias. They can also be stored in a directory service such as Oracle Internet Directory or Active Directory or can be supplied directly by your program. In most cases the alternatives to using a tnsnames.ora file are complex and carry significant overhead - you have to extend the Active Directory schema for example. In addition Oracle has supplied a number of ways of connecting simply to a database, for example by using the same name as the database servers hostname for your database, and starting with 10g you can supply a JDBC like connection string as well.

On 2/15/06, ora_forum <ora_forum_at_yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hi All:
>
> If application running on Windows using OLE DB to connect to the Oracle
> database does I need to install Oracle Client on Windows Server? OLE DB not
> using tnsnames.ora file correct?
> What the differences between OLE DB and ODBC?
>
>
> Thanks.
>
>
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--
Niall Litchfield
Oracle DBA
http://www.orawin.info

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Received on Wed Feb 15 2006 - 16:02:56 CST

Original text of this message

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