RE: Anyone using 10.1 client to 11.2 DB?

>> ... I do not have control over much of anything
>> about the various vendor apps, much less how they've linked to the
Oracle
>> Client libs.

I'm using 10 client to talk to 11.2 databases - no problems.

All I can say, given your statement above, is beware if the application is written using Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC). I have discovered that there is a registry setting (well, 3) that specifies the dlls to be loaded when connecting to an Oracle client. This does mean that every MDAC application you use MUST use the same version of Oracle client software - because the registry says so. Plus, that version must be on the path.

Dare I mention that the dll names are different for each version of Oracle client?

The registry settings you need are at
"HKLM/software/microsoft/msdtc/MTxOCI" and the three settings you need are, OracleOciLib, OracleSqlLib & OracleXaLib.

For various versions of Oracle client these need to be set as follows:

Client	RegEntry		Value
Oracle 7	OracleOciLib	ociw32.dll
Oracle 7	OracleSqlLib	sqllib18.dll
Oracle 7	OracleXaLib		xa73.dll

Client	RegEntry		Value
Oracle 8	OracleOciLib	oci.dll
Oracle 8	OracleSqlLib	sqllib80.dll
Oracle 8	OracleXaLib		xa80.dll

Client	RegEntry		Value
Oracle 8i	OracleOciLib	oci.dll
Oracle 8i	OracleSqlLib	orasql8.dll
Oracle 8i	OracleXaLib		oraclient8.dll

Client	RegEntry		Value
Oracle 9i	OracleOciLib	oci.dll
Oracle 9i	OracleSqlLib	orasql9.dll
Oracle 9i	OracleXaLib		oraclient9.dll

Client	RegEntry		Value
Oracle 10g	OracleOciLib	oci.dll
Oracle 10g	OracleSqlLib	orasql10.dll
Oracle 10g	OracleXaLib		oraclient10.dll

Client	RegEntry		Value
Oracle 11g	OracleOciLib	oci.dll
Oracle 11g	OracleSqlLib	orasql11.dll
Oracle 11g	OracleXaLib		oraclient11.dll

I'm not a great MDAC fan and I *think* that some applications can use certain component of MDAC without needing these settings - you will find out when you attempt to run the application with the 11g client, if it works, yippee (technical term) if not, I'd head into the registry and see what you find!

I can say that I recently upgraded an application (ok, 6 of them) which were hard coded to use Client 7.3 by the registry setting. They now use 10.2.0.5 with no problems at all. Much testing was done to make sure of course!

HTH Cheers,
Norm.

Norman Dunbar
Contract Senior Oracle DBA
Capgemini Database Team (EA)
Internal : 7 28 2051
External : 0113 231 2051

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