ODAC (11.2.0.3.0) Installation Instructions, Setup, and Notes

December 2011

Download includes the following products:

a) Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio (11.2.0.3.0)

b) Oracle Data Provider for .NET 4 (11.2.0.3.0)

c) Oracle Data Provider for .NET 2 (11.2.0.3.0)

d) Oracle Providers for ASP.NET 4 (11.2.0.3.0)

e) Oracle Providers for ASP.NET 2 (11.2.0.3.0)

f) Oracle Database Extensions for .NET 4 (11.2.0.3.0)

g) Oracle Database Extensions for .NET 2 (11.2.0.3.0)

h) Oracle Services for MTS (11.2.0.3.0)

i) Oracle Provider for OLE DB (11.2.0.3.0)

j) Oracle Objects for OLE (11.2.0.3.0)

k) Oracle ODBC Driver (11.2.0.3.0)

l) Oracle SQL*Plus (11.2.0.3.0)

m) Oracle Instant Client (11.2.0.3.0)

n) Oracle Universal Installer (11.2.0.3.0)

System Requirements

The following items are required for ODAC:

  • Windows operating system
    • 32-bit: Windows 7 (Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate editions), Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista (Business, Enterprise, Ultimate editions), Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows XP Professional
    • x64: Windows 7 (Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate editions), Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 (all editions, except HPC), Windows Vista (Business, Enterprise, Ultimate editions), Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows XP
  • Microsoft .NET Framework 4, including support for Entity Framework 4, 4.1, and 4.2.

  • Access to an Oracle Database Server (Oracle 9i Release 2 or later)

Additional Notes on Requirements:

  • Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio requires a minimum of Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2008 SP 1.  Entity Framework tools are only supported with Visual Studio 2010.

    Note: Visual Studio Express Editions are not supported with the Oracle Developer Tools. However, ODP.NET is supported with Visual Studio Express Edition.

  • If your applications use distributed transactions, then Oracle Services for Microsoft Transaction Server must be installed.

    Note: Microsoft introduced changes to the Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC) with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. Oracle Services for MTS support this new DTC when the minimum operating system level is Windows Vista with Service Pack 1 or Windows Server 2008.

  • ODAC does not support Code First in this release.
  • ODAC supports DbContext APIs. This note supersedes the ODP.NET 11.2.0.3 README.

Installation Instructions

The instructions below apply to installing ODAC using Oracle Universal Installer. Xcopy installation instructions are included with the download itself.

  1. Download the ODAC zip file into a temporary directory. Note: Do not download this file into the "Tmp" directory.
  2. Unzip its contents to the directory.
  3. Run Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) by launching the setup.exe that was unzipped in the same directory.
  4. OUI will lead you through ODAC installation on your machine. After the installation, you may delete the zip file and the unzipped folders and files.

Note: If an ODAC beta is installed, uninstall it before installing this ODAC release.

Connection Setup Quick Start

There are a number of methods to connect Oracle client to a database server. Two of the most common include EZCONNECT and TNSNAMES. EZCONNECT is the easiest to setup. TNSNAMES is much more maintainable in the long term. If you are new to Oracle, we recommend you use EZCONNECT. You only have to choose one or the other to connect.

These quick start instructions assume you have a valid username and password for the database server.

Note: In the setup instructions below, ORACLE_HOME represents the directory where the Oracle client Home was installed on your machine. A typical directory for an OUI Oracle client Home is:

C:\app\<user>\product\11.2.0\client_1

You will need to know where this directory is before proceeding.

EZCONNECT Setup

  1. Copy the sqlnet.ora file located in the following directory:

    2. ORACLE_HOME\Network\Admin\Sample\

    to this directory:

    ORACLE_HOME\Network\Admin\

    This file tells the Oracle client by what methods (e.g. EZCONNECT) Oracle client can connect to the Oracle database server.

  2. The Oracle client must then specify a valid user name, password, and data source to connect to the database server. To specify a data source, you can use the EZCONNECT format. In the ODP.NET data source attribute, use the following format to define how the client connects to the database server:

[//]host[:port][/service_name] 

  • host = the database server machine's host name
  • port = the database server machine's port on which it listens for incoming connection requests
  • service_name = the database's global name

For example, some syntactically valid connection strings follow: 



"user id=hr;password=hr;data source=//sales-server:1521/sales.us.acme.com" 
 "user id=hr;password=hr;data source=//sales-server/sales.us.acme.com" 
 "user id=hr;password=hr;data source=sales-server/sales.us.acme.com"

 If the port number is not specified, 1521 is used by default.

TNSNAMES Setup

An Oracle Net service name allows the Oracle client to use a simple alias to connect to the database server. The alias definition contains all the information needed to create a connection to the database server. Alias information is stored in the tnsnames.ora file typically located in the ORACLE_HOME\Network\Admin directory. This alias is used as the data source value in your connection string. ODAC installations do not create a tnsnames.ora file so you need to create one. Alternatively, you can copy an existing tnsnames.ora file from an existing Oracle client installation to your new ODAC installation. The following instructions assume you will have to create a new tnsnames.ora file.

1. Copy the tnsnames.ora file located in the following directory:

ORACLE_HOME\Network\Admin\Sample\

to this directory:



 	ORACLE_HOME\Network\Admin\

 	 <data source alias> = 
 	 (DESCRIPTION = 
 	(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = <hostname or IP>)(PORT = <port>)) 
 	 	 (CONNECT_DATA = 
 	 	 (SERVER = DEDICATED)
 	 	(SERVICE_NAME = <database service name>) 

 	 	 )  ) 
  • data source alias = the shortcut name given to identify the connect descriptor. In the ODP.NET connection string, developers set the "Data Source" attribute to the data source alias.
  • hostname or IP = the database server machine's host name or IP address
  • port = the database server machine's port on which it listens for incoming connection requests. In general, this value is set to port "1521".
  • database service name = the database's global name

The data source alias, hostname/IP, port, and database service name in the tnsnames.ora should be modified appropriately. If the TNS entries in the ORACLE_HOME\network\admin\tnsnames.ora file are not recognized by the Oracle client, create a ORACLE_HOME\oracle.key file using any text editor and type in the following line:

SOFTWARE\ORACLE\<home key>

where <home key> is the registry key for the ODAC Oracle Home. For example, if the default Oracle Home location was used during the install, the proper entry for the oracle.key file would be the following: SOFTWARE\ORACLE\KEY_OraClient11g_home1

Common Install and Setup Issues

  1. Consult the release notes first for any known issues or limitations.
  2. Check if the Oracle data access components were properly downloaded by comparing the download size to the one listed on the download page.
  3. If you have more than one Oracle Home installed on the same machine (e.g. Oracle 10g Release 2 client and Oracle 11g Release 2 client), by installing the Oracle 11.2 client, OUI will establish this client as the Oracle Home all your existing applications will use. For more information on using Multiple Oracle Homes, consult the ODP.NET documentation.
  4. It is highly recommended ODAC be installed into a new Oracle Home. Installing ODAC on top of an existing Oracle home may break existing Oracle applications. If you do install on top of an existing Oracle Home, make sure to stop all the Windows services using that Oracle Home (e.g. OracleMTSRecoveryService). Uninstall all the products in the existing Oracle Home before installing the new ODAC version.

    5. Check whether oci.dll in the existing ORACLE_HOME directory has been removed during the uninstall process. If oci.dll was not removed, follow these steps to remove the DLL.

    a) Rename oci.dll to oci.dll.delete.

    b) Reboot your machine.

    c) Delete oci.dll.delete, which should no longer be in use after rebooting.

    d) Install the new ODAC.

  5. This installation provides policy configuration files that can redirect existing 10.2 and 11.1 ODP.NET applications to the current ODP.NET version. The policy files are located in the ORACLE_HOME\odp.net\PublisherPolicy\2.x directory. In addition, the installation of ODP.NET will place ODP.NET policy DLLs into the GAC so that existing applications can start using the newly installed ODP.NET version immediately. However, if this is not desired, be sure to remove the policy DLLs from the GAC.
  6. Installing ODP.NET into a new Oracle Home means that you will not have access to any of the Oracle Data Source aliases from your previous installation. To be able to use these existing data source attributes, copy the tnsnames.ora file in the ORACLE_HOME\network\admin directory from your previous Oracle Home installation to the same directory in your new installation. Or you may create the connection aliases manually by following the Connection Setup Quick Start earlier.
  7. If errors indicating that "MSVCR80.dll is not found" are observed, install the Visual C++ 2005 runtime libraries.

Viewing the ODP.NET Documentation

The PDF and HTML documentation can be viewed from the ORACLE_HOME\ODACDoc\DocumentationLibrary\welcome.html page. To view this page, go to Start Menu --> Oracle - <Oracle Home> --> Application Development --> Oracle Data Access Components Documentation.

Additionally, the Oracle documentation is installed as part of Visual Studio Dynamic Help.

Support and Bug Reports

For any bugs and issues, you may participate in one of the OTN discussion forums for ODAC.