Configuring Oracle 11g client to work with 9i, in order to use ODP.NET for VS 2008 and C# or ASP.net, issues

Question

Hi there, i just have some issues regarding the usage of the latest oracle ODP.NET client , and using it to connect with ASP.NET 2008 and C# to an old Oracle 9i database. As stated in the ODP.NET instalation instructuins it should work, but i'm a litte bit rusty when it comes to configure oracle. The old 9i client has issues for .NET, it simply doesn't work it does the ORA-01036: illegal variable name/number' , si it needs updating. so i've installed the 11g one, runed the SQL scripts that come with the installer, now , the tricky part which i don't quite understand, is the files that go on Network/ADMIN the tnsnames.ora, sqlnet.ora , i just copied them from the 9i restarted and , it seems that by making a new connection on Servers on VS 2008 it works, then made a SQlDataConnection runed a query , tested it , i could see the retrieved rows.. using Oracle.DataAccess.Client. When it comes to retrieve the same data in a grid for example, the page never loads, and it timeouts, something doesn't work ... added the reference to Oracle.DataAccess, tried even to make some code with a connection and a command , and it gives me the Data provider internal error(-3000) [System.String] using the same connection string i used in servers... I'm sure that somehting is related with configuring the 11g client to work with my existing 9i database. Note: the 9i client still exists on the system , The Microsoft .net Oracle provider doesn't work at all, and i would preffer not to use it , so i want to stick with ODP.net and the framework 2.0 for which is inteded to work with.

I'm just courios what am i doing wrong, or how can i debug and find out what Oracle is complaining about..but it's like i said i'm no pro in Oracle , i just used it with preconfigured things, and used to work with MS SQL or MySQL which in this case they seem to work fine

Answer 1

Hello, just an update on my progress. It seems that doesn't matter which vers. of ODP.net you install it will always have problems with SQLDataSource, it simly doesn't work, so if you try any other DataSource like ObjectDataSource with DataSet or other implementation, it's working and parametrized too but remember to use :PARAM , instead of @PARAM . Jusst a piece of advice: remember to condifure your Network/Admin .ora files properly otherwise it won't work. The way i did it was to install the v10 over the 9 then the 11g , then configure it. And this time it worked , no Data provider internal error(-3000) , but still with ORA-01036: illegal variable name/number' on SQLDataSource, so my advice don't uset it , never, just for demos, for a real project , think different.

Anyone has a different oppinion on how to do things with oracle differently ?