.net - Connect to an Oracle 10g database with Microsoft ODBC for Oracle

Question

I'm trying to connect to an Oracle 10g database using the built in Microsoft ODBC for Oracle driver. I want to use an dnsless connection, so I grab my connection string from www.connectionstrings.com.

Ideally I won't have to setup a DNS entry or an Oracle TNS entry, and I may be mistaken, but I thought the above would do that for me. I'm getting the following:

ERROR [NA000] [Microsoft][ODBC driver for Oracle][Oracle]ORA-12514:
TNS:listener does not currently know of service requested in connect
descriptor

ERROR [IM006] [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager]
Driver's SQLSetConnectAttr failed

ERROR [01000] [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] 
The driver doesn't support the version of ODBC behavior that the
application requested (see SQLSetEnvAttr)."

As far as I can tell online, other people have used the Microsoft ODBC for Oracle driver to connect to 10g, but maybe I'm missing something. I'm connecting from a vb.net application by the way.

Answer 1

With 10g, you can use the EZCONNECT feature. To connect to an Oracle instance named ORCL on the server myServer, the connection string would look like this :

Driver={Microsoft ODBC for Oracle};Server=myServer:1521/ORCL;Uid=myUsername;Pwd=myPassword;