C# .NET Programming Tip: Oracle Connection Revised

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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.