Preface

This document is your primary source of introductory, installation, postinstallation configuration, and usage information for Oracle Data Provider for .NET.

Oracle Data Provider for .NET is an implementation of the Microsoft ADO.NET interface.

This Preface contains these topics:

Audience

Oracle Data Provider for .NET Developer's Guide is intended for programmers who are developing applications to access an Oracle database using Oracle Data Provider for .NET. This documentation is also valuable to systems analysts, project managers, and others interested in the development of database applications.

To use this document, you must be familiar with Microsoft .NET Framework classes and ADO.NET and have a working knowledge of application programming using Microsoft C#, Visual Basic .NET, or another .NET language.

Although the examples in the documentation and the samples in the sample directory are written in C#, developers can use these examples as models for writing code in other .NET languages.

Users should also be familiar with the use of Structured Query Language (SQL) to access information in relational database systems.

Passwords in Code Examples

For simplicity in demonstrating this product, code examples do not perform the password management techniques that a deployed system normally uses. In a production environment, follow the Oracle Database password management guidelines, and disable any sample accounts. See Oracle Database Security Guide for password management guidelines and other security recommendations.

Conventions

The following text conventions are used in this document:

Convention Meaning

boldface

Boldface type indicates graphical user interface elements associated with an action, or terms defined in text or the glossary.

italic

Italic type indicates book titles, emphasis, or placeholder variables for which you supply particular values.

monospace

Monospace type indicates commands within a paragraph, URLs, code in examples, text that appears on the screen, or text that you enter.