Oracle data provider (ODP.NET) not listed in DbProviderFactories

Question

I want to use the DbProvider class to construct a generic DAL component. This will be convenient when switching between different database providers. On a machine with Oracle 2.2 installed the Oracle provider ODP.NET is not listed when trying to list up all the database providers available on the machine.

   DataTable dtable = DbProviderFactories.GetFactoryClasses();

Though referencing the Oracle.DataAccess.dll and connect to Oracle using the OracleConnection class is not problem.

OracleConnection con = new OracleConnection();

What am I doing wrong here ?

EDIT: According to this page I should see an "Oracle Data Provider for .Net" in the list.

Answer 1

Executing your code I see the following row in my datatable:

OracleClient Data Provider .Net Framework Data Provider for Oracle
System.Data.OracleClient System.Data.OracleClient.OracleClientFactory,
System.Data.OracleClient, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089

System.Data.OracleClient should be in your GAC as of .NET Framework 2.0

Answer 2

Here is how DbProviderFactories.GetFactoryClasses works...

By default, (if you don't have an app.config), it will look in your machine.config for a section called system.data/DBProviderFactories. Basically all "registered" db provider that will be accessabile can be found in that section.

So either add that to your app.config system.data/DBProviderFactories section or to the machine.config.

something like:

<configuration>
  <system.data>
    <DbProviderFactories>
      <add name="Oracle Data Provider for .NET" invariant="Oracle.DataAccess.Client" description=".Net Framework Data Provider for Oracle" type="Oracle.DataAccess.Client.OracleClientFactory, Oracle.DataAccess, Version=10.2.0.100, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89b483f429c47342" />
    </DbProviderFactories>
  </system.data>
</configuration>

And make sure your ODP.NET version support DbProviderFactories. I think you need Oracle Database 10g Release 2 to do this.