Oracle Database Interaction Using ODP.NET and ASP.NET: All Possible Ways To Get Connected - ODP.NET (by Oracle) versus .NET Framework data provider for Oracle (by Microsoft)
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Of all of the above methods of Oracle database access, the last two (.NET Framework data provider for Oracle and ODP.NET) are the preferred methods for working with Oracle databases. These two directly talk with Oracle databases without any mediation layer (like OLEDB or ODBC), thus improving performance. And another advantage is that both of them are managed providers (no “COM interop” in between).
ODP.NET supports all native Oracle data types in the Oracle.DataAccess.Types namespace. The ODP.NET data types—either classes or structures—more closely map to the native types than the .NET Framework data types. The ODP.NET has additional Oracle-specific types compared with the Microsoft provider, and those types expose additional methods and properties to interrogate, manipulate, and convert data.
The ODP.NET OracleDataAdapter allows you to safely map Oracle data types to .NET data types where there is a potential for data loss. ODP.NET features much tighter integration (for several new data types) with .NET than Microsoft data provider for Oracle. This tighter integration is very important from the point of view of the developer/programmer. And most of all, it is FREE.
Everybody knows that, to work with Oracle natively, one has to leave the Visual Studio.NET environment and go for SQL*Plus (or even iSQL*Plus for that matter). Oracle recently released an add-in for Visual Studio.NET called “Oracle Developer Tools for Visual studio.NET”, which became as popular as hotcakes for every Visual Studio.NET programmer who works with Oracle. It is freely downloadable at http://www.oracle.com/technology/tech/dotnet/tools/index.html). Of course, Oracle even became a Microsoft Visual Studio Development Partner (so estimate the future benefits).
When you install “Oracle Developer Tools for Visual studio.NET”, it automatically installs ODP.NET also and is directly integrated into Visual Studio.NET (similar to “server explorer” in Visual Studio.NET). You can develop stored procedures and more without leaving the Visual Studio.NET environment at all, along with the support of “intellisense”. Download it and give it a try.
Any comments, suggestions, bugs, errors, feedback etc. are highly appreciated at jag_chat@yahoo.com.
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