Should network DTC be enabled for oracle transactions

Question

I have a WCF based web service hosted in windows sever 2003 machine. The database is Oracle 10G on solaris. The web service uses transactionscope extensively and ado.net transactions in some places. Most of the transactions involve only one resource (multiple oracle stored proc calls). Some of them are two resources (MSMQ and oracle stored proc). Given this does network DTC has to be enabled on the windows machine. It already has MSDTC service started. There is no transaction flow from web service client to the web service. It seems to work without network DTC enabled but I want to be sure.

The platform is .Net 2.0 SP1 + 3.0 (for WCF). Oracle driver is ODP.Net v11.1.0.6

Answer 1

If the client transactions are not flowing or if there are no multiple durable resources the transaction manager the transaction will not be promoted to distributed transaction.

You can check the transaction identifiers by accessing the TransactionInformation property of the Transaction class.

This class has DistributedIdentifier property. DistributedIdentifier would be Guid.Empty if the transaction is not promoted to a distributed transaction.

Answer 2

My beleive is that Network DTC doesn't need to be enabled. The only requirement is that both MSDTC and OracleMTSRecoveryService services are started. I can view transactions happening using the DTC component services viewer control panel app.