Chris said:
Yes I'm talking about the Oracle Client Components. I'm told that those are
required in order to use the Microsoft .NET Provider for Oracle. If I can't
install those with my application how do I deploy an application that uses
the Microsoft .NET Provider for Oracle without having to install and
configure the oracle client separately.
I haven't found a way. Oracle's Universal Installer is quite a
different animal from anything else I've ever encountered that every
attempt to merge it with other installations has been a colossal flop.
Since I only have to worry about in-house users, I just downloaded the
complete OleDb/ODBC package (which includes the client) from the Oracle
site, unpacked it, and stuck it in a different folder of my installation
CD. I have my install program check for files and if it fails, the
instruction is to go to the correct directory and run the setup for
Oracle. Even that isn't 100% foolproof as there doesn't appear to be
any 100% reliable location for the Oracle files, and the registry keys
are sufficiently variable from version to version as to bewilder me so
sometimes it looks like it's ok because it has an older version on it
but my app still won't run and then life becomes tedious.