This information supplements the Establishing a Connection chapter. You connect to a data store directly through FDO Provider for Oracle, and the underlying data source for the data store is an Oracle database.
You can connect to the data store in one step if you already know its name. Otherwise, you must connect in two steps.
The minimum required connection parameters for the initial call to Open() are service, username, and password.
The service parameter is the Oracle Net Service
Name of an Oracle instance. An instance could be running on your
machine or on some other machine in the network. You can use the
Oracle Net Manager to identify which Oracle instances are available
to you and what their Net Service Names are. In an Oracle 10g installation
on a Microsoft Windows XP machine, Net Manager can be accessed with
Start
ProgramsOracleConfiguration and
Migration ToolsNet Manager. The connection information
for the Net Service Name is contained in a file named tnsnames.ora,
which is located in the Network/Admin folder in either the Oracle
instance or the client installation directory.
Multiple users can access the data store. However, access is password-protected.
An Oracle data source, when accessed by FDO Provider for Oracle, may contain more than one data store. For the first call to Open(), a data store name is optional. If successful, the first call to Open() results in the data store parameter becoming a required parameter and a list of the names of the data stores in the data source becoming available. You must choose a data store and call Open() again.
If you know the name of the data store, you can provide it for the first call to Open() and make the connection in one step.