How to make odp.net 12c to work with other oracle client

Question

I have oracle 10g client(full) and 11g instant client installed on my machine. I am trying to use ODP.NET 12c. Here is what I did.

1. Added Oracle.DataAccess.dll to References.
2. Copied OraOps12.dll to the folder where my executable is.

When running I got "Unable to load DLL 'OraOps12.dll': The specified module could not be found. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007007E)".

I think it could be due to dependency issue. So I further copied 12c's

• oci.dll
• oraociei12.dll
• orannzsbb12.dll

I then still got other dependency errors. I don't want to copy the whole InstantClient though.

My goal is to get the app to work with other versions of Oracle client. Our customers have different version of Oracle client installed. So any way to get the app (ODAC12c) work with customers' current version of Oracle client without having to install 12c client?

Thanks,

Update: I forgot to mention a few things

1. my ODAC is 32bit and I compiled my app on x86.

2. I didn't use Oracle.ManagedDataAccess.dll because it does not include BULKCOPY classs. If anyone knows a version of Oracle.ManagedDataAccess.dll that includes bulkcopy class please let me know.

3. Our customers already has different versions of Oracle client installed for other apps and they don't want to change their environment just for this new app. So my goal becomes to make one version of ODAC in my app work with different versions of existing Oracle client (each customer environment is different). Is this possible and if yes, how?

Answer 1

You know, I just spent 5 minutes looking for the guy that I remember attempting this before...and it turned out to be you shawn ;).

Honestly, to rely on what the client has installed is a crap-shoot. I would use the full xcopy package, get it working, and then work backwards, deleting what is not needed.

• Don't run the install.bat that comes with it. Doing so adds registry entries that aid in locating the unmanaged binaries, but you also risk messing with a client installed copy.
• Drop the whole xcopy install into your app's folder as a subfolder.
• Instead, set the DllPath to this new subfolder

Example:

<oracle.dataaccess.client>
  <settings>
    <add name="DllPath" value="C:\app\user\product\11.1.0\client_1\BIN"/>

• Then set the Oracle_Home environment variable

Example:

Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("ORACLE_HOME", @"C:\app\user\product\11.1.0\client_1\");

This article does something similar: http://dbaportal.eu/2013/02/22/true-xcopy-runtime-for-oracle-odp-net-application/

He even adds a policy to redirect in case he has referenced projects that reference a particular version of Oracle.DataAccess.dll

He adds his oracle home with a batch file though. The part I'm not so sure of is that he also adds his new xcopy install to the path with that same batch file. DllPath should take care of that, but if I'm wrong, you can also do that at runtime:

Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("PATH", @"C:\app\user\product\11.1.0\client_1\BIN");

From here, I'd setup some basic unit tests using all the ODP.net functionality you are using and get some positive tests and then work backwards - start deleting what you don't need, running your tests each time. You might be able to use sysinternals procexp to show loaded dlls (or procmon to show access to the files). Just loading your tests might be enough to lock the files so you can delete all the ones that aren't locked.

I'm not sure doing this is supported. Then again Oracle does list "the current application's directory" in the unmanaged search order so they didn't close the door either.

EDIT: Found one of the links of other people doing this: http://alderprogs.blogspot.com/2009/04/deploying-odpnet-with-oracle-instant.html

I'm not sure why but they download the instant client separately (it's already part of the xcopy package).

EDIT 4/15/2016: If you're reading this these days note two things. 1) I don't think setting the environment variables are necessary if you are already setting DllPath. 2) I don't think this is worth doing when the managed provider now only requires one or two dlls.

Answer 2

It's a bad idea to copy single DLL's to different directories and hope it will work.

In general ODP.NET provider works only together with corresponding Oracle Client, i.e. in order to use ODP.NET 12 you must also install Oracle Client 12. Same applies for version 11 or 10. Only exception is the ODP.NET Managed Driver, there you need only a single DLL (Oracle.ManagedDataAccess.dll).

Furthermore the architecture (32 bit vs. 64 bit) has to match.

In case you use OLEDB provider it's even not possible to have more than one provider installed (for each architecture) - unless you hack your system by manipulating PATH variable and Registry all the time.

My proposal would be: Remove all Oracle Clients from your machine and install only one (or one per architecture) Oracle Client properly. It's very unlikely that an application works with one Oracle Client version only. It is also a good approach to install both 32bit and 64bit on one machine, follow this instruction to do it: Install Oracle x86 and X64 on one machine

In case you really need to test your application with different Oracle Client version, setup a couple of test-PC (maybe in a Virtual-Box) each with a different Client version. Otherwise it will be very challenging to handle it.

Update:

I think each (Unmanaged) ODP.NET version works only with according version of Oracle Client. Maybe by chance there are some combinations which work out but in general the versions should match.

I see two different solutions:

(1) Ask your client to install his Oracle Client including ODP.NET. He can choose the version, only the architecture (32 bit or 64 bit) has to match. Then you don't supply any ODP.NET with your application.

In your *.csproj, resp. *.vbproj file define your reference like this:

    <Reference Include="Oracle.DataAccess">
      <SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
      <Private>False</Private>
    </Reference>

Attributes like Version=... or processorArchitecture=... are not required. Then your application should run with any Oracle/ODP.NET version.

Your customer can download ODP.NET provider from here: Oracle Data Access Components (ODAC) for Windows Downloads and install it on top of existing Oracle Client installation. In readme.txt it says "The files of this zip file is NOT to be installed on top of an existing Oracle Universal Installer (OUI) based Oracle Home installation.", however I don't see any reason why not doing it. It works well, you just have to carefully provide correct folder for existing Oracle installation and correct ORACLE_HOME name and do not install dependencies.

(2) In your setup script/exe determine the Version of customer installed Oracle Client and copy according ODP.NET to customer machine.

In order to determine version of Oracle Client you can to search for file oci.dll in folders provided by PATH environment. oci.dll is a normal .NET assembly, so you can read out the version easily.

For a proper installation of ODP.NET follow the file configure.bat which is part of downloaded ODP.NET XCopy version. In my opinion this batch file is easy to understand. Basically it does

1 - Copy file Oracle.DataAccess.dll to target machine

2 - Copy different resource files *\Oracle.DataAccess.resources.dll to target machen

3 - Add these DLL's to the GAC. This can be done by gacutil.exe or OraProvCfg.exe (included in downloader ZIP file) or your setup application provides this operation.

4 - Make a few Regristy entries. Newer ODP.NET versions write/read into HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Oracle\ODP.NET (for 32 bit), resp. HKLM\SOFTWARE\Oracle\ODP.NET (for 64 bit). Older ODP.NET versions use HKLM\SOFTWARE\Oracle\KEY_{ORACLE_HOME_KEY}\ODP.NET\ (for 64 bit), resp HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Oracle\KEY_{ORACLE_HOME_KEY}\ODP.NET\ (for 32 bit) instead

That's it, you should be able to include this in your setup.