Oracle Provider for. NET expands the ado.net (ZT)

Ado|oracle Oracle provides a number of tools to help you access Oracle databases from. NET Applications.
by Lee Thé

George Demarest
More than One-third of Visual Studio magazine readers use Oracle databases, and many of the remaining people may also use them in the future. We came to Oracle company to see what measures they had taken to make from visual Studio. NET access to Oracle databases has become more convenient. VSM's editor-in-chief, Lee Thé, interviewed George Demarest, director of Oracle's database marketing department.

What vsm:oracle have done to help visual Studio. NET developers use Oracle databases?
Demarest: Oracle ODBC Driver-This is the most basic. Then there are Oracle Provider for OLE DB, Oracle Objects for OLE, and our own internally developed COM Automation APIs. The API provides permissions to access extensible Oracle functionality, including advanced queues, multimedia support, and object support. You can use APIs to access COM Automation components through a standard call mechanism (callout mechanisms).
Oracle 9i includes Oracle Services for MTS, and we also consolidate active Directory and support Windows Authentication and Windows Very Large Memory (VLM) drivers. This is important, especially on 32-bit systems. We have integrated Windows NT Performance Monitor (Performance Monitor). Also, you can start and shut down the Oracle server through Windows Services Manager (Service Manager). My personal favorite is that we have a failover technology called Oracle Fail Safe. It provides a GUI for failover (failover) and failback (failback), and can even be used for non-Oracle databases.
Compared to other operating environments, Windows has a more unique operating capability, and Oracle has done a lot of customization for Windows, which can be reflected in these tools. We will again rule windows with Oracle 9i, Oracle's newest core database product. VSM: For Oracle, Windows NT is a Tier 1 platform. NET is also a Tier 1 platform?
Demarest: Yes. If it is a server environment running on Windows, we will support it. In Oracle, all Windows Server platforms support Tier 1 in development.

What resources do vsm:oracle use to support Visual Studio developers?
Demarest: We have a separate department that is primarily responsible for windows--a Windows integration and testing team. Also, do you remember that there were two articles attacking us last October because we were late in publishing Windows ports than UNIX ports? So, starting with Oracle 9i version 2, we have also released Windows, Linux, HP, and Solaris versions. Especially this year, I can say that in our company, people are putting a lot of attention on Windows and Linux. We are confident that we are releasing other Tier 1 platforms, as well as the same quality and functionality of Windows. Windows is a reference platform for Oracle 9i servers and databases.

VSM: What is Oracle's official position on support for VS developers?
Demarest: We know that Visual Studio is a tool that people use and deploy widely. We will continue to integrate with the Windows environment through Oracle Provider for OLE DB, and recently we have also developed Oracle Provider for. NET (odp.net). Now it is a beta release and you can download it from our Oracle technology website http://otn.oracle.com/tech/windows/odpnet/. It allows us to expand the ado.net that people think cannot be extended. It can also be used to further integrate Oracle, including advanced queues and other features.
Vsm:oracle data Provider for. NET is officially supported by Oracle, or only through newsgroup support?
Demarest: It is fully and officially supported by Oracle.

VSM: Your beta support is really good. Can the developer buy support for it? Can they start reporting the problem?
Demarest: Yes, it is. Windows is a popular platform and we have many specialized technologies.

VSM: So you really like. Net?
Demarest: We think. NET has advantages and disadvantages. We like organized APIs and methods. On the other hand, we will also encounter problems with obvious ownership methods.

VSM: Do you have any plans to place the. NET Runtime in Oracle? The Java VM has been placed in Oracle.
Demarest: We think putting a Java or a. NET runtime into a database is done in close proximity to data processing, as in stored procedures and triggers. We do have a Java environment in the database server. But we retracted the environment (scale back). We use it for Java stored procedures and near-data programming. However, we are not convinced that having runtime in the database is a good thing. It can pose a security problem.
And we are not convinced that the. NET runtime is completely secure and stable. We believe that there are many different structures that can be used to develop stored procedures in Oracle databases, so we took the attitude of waiting and seeing. But we will definitely provide a variety of local access.