C# .NET Programming Tip: Oracle Connection Revised
Take not that Microsoft will discontinue support for System.Data.OracleClient in .NET 4.0. This method should still work, but it will be depreciated…
Now that I have had more time to work with Oracle, I found a better way to connect then described in my previous post. With this new method you can connect to multiple instances in one program by getting rid of that tnsnames file.
*Remember that a project reference to System.Data.OracleClient must be added:
OracleConnection dbConnection; string connectionString = "Server=(DESCRIPTION =(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = *******)(PORT = 1521))(CONNECT_DATA = (SID = *****)));Persist Security Info=true;User Id=*****;Password=*****;"; dbConnection = new OracleConnection(connectionString);
It’s really that simple. The key here is that the connection string must use the “Server” attribute instead of the “Data Source” one. I ran upon that while looking at the specification on Microsoft’s MSDN documentation site.
It’s basically a tnsnames string with a few more attributes like user id and password. Just remember that:
host is the name of your server or ip address, sid is the name of your database meaning the *** part of ***.world, and of course the user id and password are your login credentials.
There is another helpful step that I will be posting about. It relates to ClickOnce and the 4 DLL files that you need to connect to Oracle.
Tags: "no tnsnames", .net, c#, connection, easier, oracle, tip
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:10 am
I have my .exe (framework 2.0), the 4 DLLs you mention all in the same directory. I also am using System.Data.OracleClient. When I run the exe, I receive error “System.Data.OracleClient requires Oracle client software version 8.1.7 or greater.” So, my exe is not looking into the current directory for the dlls. Any ideas?
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Well, I’ve only distributed my apps through clickonce deployment, so I can’t really say what the issue is at this point.
I’m just guessing here, but when visual studio is used to deploy the application, it includes a manifest file, which tells where and what is included in the application. So I’m not sure you can just copy the DLLS and the program executable into a directory without all of the support files as well. Also, when I include the oracle DLLs in the project itself, I tell it to copy the oracle files into the EXE directory (the application then knows they exist).