Products, die, come back to life, die again… Anyway, those of you building cubes from Oracle data sources may be interested to know that the Microsoft .NET provider for Oracle has been killed off. Here’s the official announcement-disguised-as-a-blog-entry:
http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2009/06/15/system-data-oracleclient-update.aspx
Yet again, it’s those persuasive “customers, partners, and MVPs” who are asking for the product to be canned. I just hope that there aren’t any “customers, partners, and MVPs” who are asking for Steve Ballmer to sell Microsoft to Google for $1, because then we’ll all be in trouble… Anyway, needless to say, not everyone is pleased:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/18/microsoft_kills_oracle_connector/
One blog entry I’ve had half-written for a long time is a discussion of the problems faced when building cubes from Oracle data sources (thanks for your help on this David; anyone else with any hints, please leave a comment). There are a lot of bugs and data type issues that need to be dealt with, and from what I’ve gathered using the Microsoft .NET provider was part of how they could be worked around.
I am really annoyed about this – I have wasted many hours trying to aggregate data from Oracle into Analysis Services, the 64 bit issue being particularly stumping ; many many blog posts out there purporting to the REAL way to do this.I have heard that the new Oracle drivers fix the problem, but have not had reason to go back and redownload and retry.Since there are so many Oracle db\’s out there and the OLAP tools are expensive, SSAS on top of Oracle should be a compelling proposition.The connectivity issues however are a severe stumbling block.
I work with DataDirect Technologies, and as a third party provider, you might consider Connect for ADO.NET from DataDirect Technologies. Connect for ADO.NET offers a client-less solution for .NET platforms – free from OracleClient or so called Instant Client. Go grab a copy of our install and check out what a true pedigree, 100% managed provider, can offer while supporting the latest .NET technologies such as the ADO.NET Entity Framework provider for Oracle – http://blogs.datadirect.com/category/net-connectionsThanks, Mike mnelson@crt-tanaka.com