The Oracle data provider allows you to use information from an existing Oracle tnsnames.ora file to connect. Using an Oracle tnsnames.ora file to centralize connection information in your Oracle environment simplifies maintenance when changes occur. The DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET Oracle data provider does not require the Oracle client. However, some users already have the client installed on their machines and have a tnsnames.ora file configured.
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■ If the Oracle data provider referenced the net service name entry ARMSTRONG.ACCT as shown in this example, the data provider would connect to the Oracle RAC system identified by the service name acct.us.yourcompany.com (SERVICE_NAME=acct.us.yourcompany.com). In addition, the data provider would enable connection failover (FAILOVER=on) and client load balancing (LOAD_BALANCE=on) for all connections to that system.Alternatively, DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET provides a programmatic way to enable connection failover and client load balancing through options specified in the data provider connection string. For example, the following connection string enables both of these features: