This chapter contains:
This guide serves as a quick start guide, which describes Oracle technologies for the Microsoft .NET Framework, including the key features of Oracle Data Provider for .NET and Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio. It leads you through installation and configuration, shows how to build basic applications using Oracle .NET products, and how to create and use both PL/SQL and .NET stored procedures.
After working through this book, you will be ready to continue with more extensive documentation. NOTE: F1 online context sensitive help (dynamic help), as well as html and pdf, is available for several Oracle .NET products, as indicated below.
See Also:
Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio Help - provided as F1 online help
Oracle Data Provider for .NET Developer's Guide - product includes F1 online help
Oracle Database Extensions for .NET Developer's Guide - included in Oracle Developer Tools F1 help
Oracle Providers for ASP.NET Developer's Guide - product includes F1 online help
The Microsoft .NET Framework is a multi-language environment for building, deploying, and running applications and XML Web services. Its main components are:
The Common Language Runtime, or CLR, is a language-neutral development and run-time environment that provides services that help manage running applications
The Framework Class Libraries, or FCL, provide a consistent, object-oriented library of prepackaged functionality.
Oracle Data Provider for .NET (ODP.NET) features optimized ADO.NET data access to the Oracle database. ODP.NET allows developers to take advantage of advanced Oracle database functionality, including Real Application Clusters, XML DB, and advanced security.
ODP.NET makes using Oracle from .NET more flexible, faster, and more stable. ODP.NET includes many features not available from other .NET drivers, including a native XML data type, self-tuning, Oracle RAC-optimized connection pooling, promotable transactions, and Advanced Queuing.
Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio (ODT) is a set of application tools that integrate with the Visual Studio environment. These tools provide graphical user interface access to Oracle functionality, enable the user to perform a wide range of application development tasks, and improve development productivity and ease of use. Oracle Developer Tools supports the programming and implementation of .NET stored procedures using Visual Basic, C#, and other .NET languages.
These are some of the Oracle Developer Tools features:
Integration with Server Explorer for browsing the Oracle schema.
Designers and wizards to create and alter schema objects.
The ability to drag and drop schema objects onto a .NET form to automatically generate code.
A PL/SQL editor and debugger with integrated context-sensitive dynamic help.
An Oracle Data Window for performing routine database tasks such as inserting and updating data or testing stored procedures in the Visual Studio environment.
An Oracle Query Window for executing SQL statements or PL/SQL scripts.
An Oracle Deployment Wizard for .NET described "Integration with Microsoft Visual Studio".
Oracle Database Extensions for .NET is a database option for Oracle Database on Windows. It makes it possible to build and run .NET stored procedures or functions with Oracle Database for Microsoft Windows using Visual Basic .NET or Visual C#.
Integration with Microsoft Visual Studio
After building .NET procedures and functions into a .NET assembly, you can deploy them in Oracle Database using the Oracle Deployment Wizard for .NET, a component of the Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio.
Oracle Providers for ASP.NET offer ASP.NET developers an easy to use method to store application state common to web applications (such as web user information, shopping carts) within an Oracle database. These providers are modeled on existing Microsoft ASP.NET providers, sharing similar schema and programming interfaces to provide .NET developers a familiar interface.
Oracle supports the following providers:
Membership Provider
Role Provider
Site Map Provider
Session State Provider
Profile Provider
Web Events Provider
Web Parts Personalization Provider
Cache Dependency Provider
Each ASP.NET provider can be used individually or in combination with other Oracle ASP.NET providers for your web site. Each of them store a specific set of web site information.
Oracle Providers for ASP.NET classes, their use, installation, and requirements are described in Oracle Providers for ASP.NET Developer's Guide, which is also provided as dynamic help.
See Also:
Oracle Providers for ASP.NET Developer's Guide