====================================================
ORACLE DATA PROVIDER FOR .NET 11.1.0.6.20 PRODUCTION
====================================================
Copyright (c) 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.

This document provides information that supplements the Oracle Data Provider 
for .NET (ODP.NET) Production documentation.


===============
IMPORTANT NOTES
===============

.NET Framework Support

ODP.NET supports .NET Framework 1.x, 2.0, 3.0, and 3.5.  However, ODP.NET 
11.1.0.6.20 is not a LINQ enabled data provider.


============================
INSTALLATION AND SETUP NOTES
============================

1. Product Dependencies

ODP.NET requires Oracle Client or Oracle Instant Client to operate properly.  
Oracle Client can be installed by Oracle Univeral Installer (OUI).  Oracle 
Instant Client can be installed by OUI or XCopy install.  If OUI is used,
make sure to have either "Oracle Client" or "Oracle Instant Client" checked 
during the install process so that it will be installed.  If XCopy install is 
used, make sure that "Oracle Instant Client" is explicitly installed or have
it implicitly installed by the ODP.NET install, which will also install its
dependencies by default.

2. Policy DLLs

Note that the ODAC 11.1 production install will not ship with policy DLLS that 
redirect a reference of a beta version of ODP.NET to a production 
version of ODP.NET.


========================
NEW FEATURES AND CHANGES
========================

End-to-End Tracing Attribute Support

ODP.NET now supports ActionName and ModuleName write-only properties on the 
OracleConnection object which corresponds to the End-to-end tracing 
attributes (Action and Module) that can be set on the client/middle-tier and 
propagated to the server side whenever the next server roundtrip is incurred. 
Using these attributes may be helpful when tracking database activities or 
when debugging applications.


==================================
TIPS, LIMITATIONS AND KNOWN ISSUES
==================================

1.  Data truncation errors can be encountered when fetching LONG data from a 
    UTF8 database.

2.  For distributed transactions, ODP.NET does not support proxy 
    authentication without a client password because of an OraMTS limitation.

3.  PL/SQL LONG, LONG RAW, RAW, VARCHAR data types cannot be bound with more 
    than 32512 bytes.

4.  Having a command execution terminated through either the invocation of 
    OracleCommand's Cancel method or expiration of OracleCommand's 
    CommandTimeout property value may return ORA-00936 or ORA-00604, rather 
    than the expected ORA-01013.

5.  An exception is not thrown when change notification is registered on a 
    bad port number.

6.  If the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Oracle\NLS_LANG registry entry is 
    set to "NA", ORA-12705 errors will be encountered when using ODP.NET.  
    To eliminate this problem, remove the 
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Oracle\NLS_LANG registry entry.

7.  TimeStamp with Local Time Zone Attributes of a UDT
    Binding a custom object with an attribute of type TimeStamp with Local Time 
    Zone as a parameter is not supported in the production release.  The same 
    limitation applies for TimeStamp with Local Time Zone Elements of 
    a Collection.

8.  XMLType Attributes/Elements of a UDT
    ODP.NET does not support UDTs with XMLType as an attribute or an element.

9.  LOB Attributes of a UDT
    If a LOB attribute of a custom object is referenced as an 
    OracleClob/OracleBlob/OracleBFile by the application and that custom object 
    is bound as an in/out parameter, Oracle LOB object will not be usable and 
    returns "ORA-22922 LOB VALUE CHANGED UNEXPECTED" when accessed.  The 
    application should get a new reference from the custom object as a 
    workaround. [bug 5917173]

10. OracleUdt.GetValue()
    If OracleUdt.GetValue() is called twice on the same attribute within the
    ToCustomObject() method, an exception will be thrown. [bug 5925130]

11. Not Fetching Mapped LOB attributes
    If a lob attribute is mapped but if the value is not fetched by the 
    OracleUdt.GetValue() method in the IOracleCustomType.ToCustomObject() 
    implementation of the custom object, a memory leak may be observed.
    To avoid this memory leak, only map LOB attributes that are actually 
    fetched. [bug 6669705]

12. Invalid Attributes/Elements Mapped 
    If Attributes/Elements are mapped to unsupported .NET types, null data 
    is returned to the Custom Type. [bug 6677521]

13. Distributed Transactions and Proxy Connections
    Oracle Services for Microsoft Transaction Server (OraMTS) does not support
    distributed transactions in conjunction with proxy connections.