Re: Oracle 9i Client connections to Oracle 7 DO work (sort of) !!

Norman Dunbar wrote:

> Morning all, (Evening Aussies)

Late afternoon here at the arse side of Africa. :-)

> There have been a couple of posts recently regarding not being able to
> do client connections from a 9i client to an Oracle 7 database. I wish
> to stick my neck out and say that it DOES work !

Beg to differ based on my experience.

I get a memory error when using SQL*Plus with Net9i client against a Oracle 7.3.4 database. Every single time.

This is a crash and burn error (as you described).

Interestingly, I do not get a crash and burn error when using Delphi 6 Client-Server using a native BDE Oracle connection. However, the connection does fail. I get an ORA-01002 - Fetch out of sequence. And this happens when I set the TDATABASE object's connect property to TRUE.

This kinda points to me to an Net9i or OCI issue when dealing (probably at protocol level) with a Oracle 7 database.

> I use TOAD on a PC with 9iR2 Personal (and thus client) and can connect
> quite happily to my 7.3.4 database - which is currently undergoing
> conversion to 8174.
> However, SQLPlus (and SQLPlusW) simply do a Dr Watson when I try the
> same connection.

Interesting... what is TOAD doing then, that is different? Is it maybe using a different type of connection string (e.g. not a TNS alias but providing the alias definition in-line so to speak?)

> I suspect that the problem is really (built in) to SQLPlus and not to
> the actual client software itself.

Why then my Delphi 6 ORA-01002 problem?

> However, I have a couple of apps written in Borland's wonderful C++
> BUilder

Er.. Delphi is a lot better and then there is Kylix too.. ;-)

> which make direct or ODBC connections to the database - both of
> these connect file to O7,

The plot thickens. What BDE version are you using? Or are you using dbExpress? Hmm.. I have not tried dbExpress yet with Delphi6 in this scenario... will have a look see.

--
Billy