During my recent conversation about Oracle linked server with one of my client, I learned something new about “Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Oracle”. This blog has highlights of a lengthy conversation.
- MSDAORA is short form for “Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Oracle”.
- MSDAORA is driver provided by Microsoft to connect to Oracle database server.
- There is no 64-bit version provided by Microsoft for MSDAORA. Its only available for 32 bit.
- MSDAORA is no longer supported by current versions of Oracle. It was last updated for Oracle 9, and is no longer being updated.
- For 64 bit, we need to download and use the Oracle client and the provider from their site for connecting with SQL. Oracle has a 64-bit version that is usable for us.
- Oracle is a provider which is supported by Oracle.
Here is a snip from one of Microsoft connect item.
If you are using Oracle data sources, you should migrate to the Oracle-supplied provider and driver. Microsoft OLEDB Provider for Oracle (msdaora.dll) and Microsoft ODBC driver for Oracle (msorcl32.dll) are built by using Oracle Call Interface (OCI) version 7. Oracle no longer supports applications that use OCI version 7 calls, and these technologies are deprecated.
Now you may ask, how do I get 32-bit version? Well, it’s already available as a part of the operating system. You can do that by creating a UDL file as suggested in the link and opening it via 32-bit command prompt. Hopefully you know that there are two cmd.exe on 64-bit machine, one is under C:\Windows\System32 and another is under C:\Windows\SysWOW64.
I have created a UDL file and opened via both commands prompts.
As we can see above, we can see provider under 32 bit but not 64 bit.
Hopefully this blog would help you in getting the common question which I found is very difficult to search and get answer.
Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com)
First appeared on SQL SERVER – How to Download Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Oracle (MSDAORA) for 64 bit?