ODAC installation for Visual Studio 2017?

LuckyLuke82

Hi,

I'm using visual Studio 2017 Proffesional. Within it I installed Business Intelligence add-in, so that I can create reports (Microsoft Reporting Services).

We use Oracle 11.4g version, and my PC is OS Win 10.

Unfortunally I can't see my reports in preview mode, as I don't have installed proper ODAC driver. Errors are different kind, but they all refer to not being able to connect to Oracle DB:

"An attempt has been made to use a data extension 'ORACLE' that  is either not registered for this report server or is not supported in this edition of reporting Services."

"The selected data extension 'ORACLE' is not installed or cannot be loaded. Verify that the selected data extension is installed on the client for local reports and on the report server for published reports."

Given above description, can somebody  tell me exactly which ODAC driver should I install on my PC ? Link to driver download would be great !

Thanks for help in advance!

Alex Keh-Oracle

I've published some instructions using the Reporting Services with Oracle Autonomous DB. The difference with on-premises DB should only be customizing the authentication features you use. The most likely step you are missing is running the OraProvCfg utility to register ODP.NET in the .NET configuration file. Here's the tutorial:

https://www.oracle.com/a/otn/docs/database/connecting-ssrs-to-oracle-adb.pdf

I recommend you use managed ODP.NET to make install and configuration easier. All  ODP.NET19c versions support connectivity back to Oracle DB 11.2.0.4.

LuckyLuke82

Hi Alex,

this isn't helping me much.

I still don't know which version of ODAC - or Xcopy as mentioned in your tutorial - should I install.

However I downloaded 64bit version as Win10 is 64bit and tried to follow your steps.

Unfortunally I didn't pass even step 1. Isn't there any simple installer file like "setup.exe" ?

In these days there should be something simple as this.

Alex Keh-Oracle

Any of the ODP.NET 19c versions will work.

Microsoft has a similar tutorial here covering the managed ODP.NET configuration part.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/reporting-services/report-data/oracle-connection-type-ssrs?view=sql-server-ver15

The Oracle tutorial is much more end to end, though it covers an Autonomous DB scenario.

To answer your other question, the ODT tools and Oracle DB Client installs use setup.exe or equivalent VSIX. However, neither performs the machine.config changes SSRS uses. In general, .NET data providers are no longer making automatic machine.config changes due to the global effect on existing apps. The preferred method is for developers to change the app's specific app.config file. However, that's only possible if the SSRS exposes a local app.config type file, which it does not.

That leaves customers with these instructions, which I agree can be clumsy to implement. However, SSRS is the outlier. It's not modernizing its data provider infrastructure to follow ADO.NET best practices. In fact, it's not clear when SSRS will support ADO.NET Core.