Oracle Connections
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The latest version of this topic can be found at Visual Studio 2017 Documentation. When you configure either an Oracle ODBC DSN or an OLE DB connection, you must have the Oracle SQL*Net client-side components installed. SQL*Net is the Oracle network transport layer. Most Oracle ODBC drivers, including the Microsoft driver and the Microsoft OLE DB Oracle provider map, call directly to this SQL*Net layer.
After SQL*Net is configured, notice your SQL*Net connection string. Typically, this consists of a specifier for the Oracle database server name and the network protocol type (such as TCP/IP and named pipes). Often, the SQL*Net connection string is mapped to an alias. In this case, it is only necessary to note the alias. For information about how to configure SQL*Net, contact your Oracle DBA, refer to the SQL*Net documentation, or refer to your Oracle ODBC driver Help file for an example of a connection string.