How to write a .Net application that works with bo

Question

see also System.Data.OracleClient namespace discontinued?

(Firstly don’t panic yet, System.Data.OracleClient is not being removed by Microsoft yet, however it is not in the client version of .net 4)

This use to be possible by using System.Data.OracleClient, however Microsoft has decided to deprecate OracleClient. (OracleClient is the ADO.NET provider for Oracle developed by Microsoft and ships as a part of the .NET Framework.)

You could use ODP.Net, however do you wish your Sql Server customers to have to install ODP.Net? (Do you wish any of your customers to have to install Oracle software?)

DataDirect is not an option as it costs an arm and a leg; it may just about be affordable if you need to connect a single server to a mainframe. However it is not an option to expect all customers to buy it.

Moving form C# to Java is not a good option, as I am a C# programmer and wish to be able to earn a living!

Like most ISVs that have to support multiple RDBMS we only need a solution that allows us to use the small subset of Oracle that is the same as SqlServer. Therefore System.Data.OracleClient was powerful enough for us.

(Maybe we should just start storing all data in flat files, so that customer’s DBA stop trying to tell us how to write software. Oracle DBAs are the worse!)

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My real question is how can I write .NET software that talks to Oracle that is us pain free to installed as .NET software that talks to SqlServer. Having to use ODP.NET just makes the oracle client install yet more painful, with yet more to go wrong.

If I was using JAVA I could just use JDBC type 4 drivers. Microsoft provides one for SqlServer and Oracle provides one for Oracle. However it seems that Oracle wishes to make .Net usage as hard as possible and Microsoft wishes to make Oracle usage as hard as possible.

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So far the best option looks like devArt's dotConnect.

However I am starting to question weather .NET is a good development system for ISV, as sooner or later you always get a customer that demands oracle support. In the Java world they seem to have this problem solved.

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It looks like Oracle may be about to bring out a senible Fully Managed ADO.NET provider themselfs it may even be easy to install! see here that claims Beta – 2011, Production – End of 2011.

Answer 1

Have you looked at alternate Oracle providers like devArt's dotConnect? This driver, as an example, is 100% managed code, supports many advanced Oracle features, provides Entity Framework support (that will come some day in ODP.NET, I'm sure).

There are a bunch of other features (like ASP.NET provider model support) that we didn't get until the ODP.NET 11g release. Pretty liberal licensing and reasonably priced. Also comes with it's own profiler, if I remember correctly.

In their tests, performs favorably compared to ODP.NET. I'd love to point you to something open source but, in my experience, once you've bought into Oracle as a database, you've already accepted the fact that you'll be laying down some cash for your database-related tooling.