OpenLink ODBC Driver for Oracle (Express Edition) Installation and Configuration

Review Preinstallation Documentation: Pre-Installation Configuration for Oracle Express Edition Drivers (Windows)

Installation

The OpenLink ODBC Driver for Oracle (Express Edition) is distributed as a Windows MSI installer. Double click on the installer 'ntl6eora.msi' to commence the installation:

This is the Welcome dialog for the OpenLink ODBC Driver for Oracle (Express Edition):

Please read the Software License Agreement and accept before continuing your installation:

Before installation, you will be prompted for a license file. If a license file already exists on the machine, select the 'use existing file' option. A trial (try) or full (buy) license can be obtained by selecting the 'try and buy' option, which loads our online try and buy web page:

To obtain the trial license, you must be a registered user on the OpenLink Web site and login with the username (e-mail address) and password for that user. Click on the 'Shop' link to visit our online shop cart to purchase a full license if required.

Click on the 'download license' button to obtain an immediate license file and save it to your desktop. Alternatively, mail can be sent to your e-mail address with a link to your OpenLink Data Space (ODS). Here, all trial and full license files will be stored in a specialized Briefcase for download at a later date.

Select the license file to be used for the installation:

Choose to perform a custom, typical, or complete installation of the driver:

Select the features to be installed:

Click the install button to begin the installation:

Installation in progress:

The installation is complete and ready for use:

Configuration

To configure an ODBC DSN, run the ODBC Administrator located in the Administrative Tools section of the Control Panel:

Click on the Drivers tab to confirm that the driver has been successfully installed:

From either the User or System DSN tab, click on the Add button and select the Express Edition Driver from the list. Select the Unicode version of the driver if and only if you are working with multi-byte character sets, as unnecessary translations can significantly affect ODBC performance:

On the Data Source tab, provide a suitable DSN name and optional description for the Data Source to be created:

The Connection Tab requests the minimum parameters required to make a connection to the target database:

• Host: This is the fully qualified hostname, or IP address, of the machine hosting the DBMS you wish to access, e.g., dbms-server.example.com or 192.168.155.123. Any hostname which can be resolved by your local DNS is acceptable.

• Port: This is the port on which Oracle is listening.

• SID: An Oracle System Identifier.

• Connect now to verify that all settings are correct: Will attempt to connect to the database, once you click Continue.

• Login ID: This is a valid user for the Oracle Database.

• Password: This is a valid password for the Oracle Database.

The advanced button displays additional, optional parameters that can be configured:

Name	Description
NetworkProtocol	Set the network protocol for the connections. Default is 'tcp'. Can be set to all possible protocols Net8 supports. Only needed for JDBC OCI driver.
MaxStatements	Specifies the value of the maxStatements property. This will be the size of the application cache (which will be used by both implicit and explicit caching).
ImplicitCachingEnabled	Sets the value of the implicitCachingEnabled property, which enables or disables the implicit cache. Note that this is independent of the cache size, set with setMaxStatements().
ExplicitCachingEnabled	Sets the value of the explicitCachingEnabled property, which enables or disables the explicit cache. Note that this is independent of the cache size, set with setMaxStatments().

Click Next to proceed to the Options dialog. This dialog contains optional parameters that are not required for basic ODBC connectivity:

• Drop Catalog from Meta calls - Enable this option to have the catalog name not appear for tables, views, and procedures when requesting database meta-data.

• Drop Schema from Meta calls - Enable this option to have the schema-name not appear for tables, views, and procedures when requesting database meta-data.

• Return an empty ResultSet for SQLStatistics - Check this box to have SQLStatistics() return an empty resultset. Use this if the underlying database does not support retrieval of statistics about a table (e.g. what indexes it has).

• Disable support of quoted identifier - If set, the call SQLGetInfo for 'SQL_IDENTIFIER_QUOTE_CHAR' will return a space (" "). It can be used if the DBMS doesn't support quoted SQL like select * from "account."

• Disable support of search string escape - If set, the call SQLGetInfo for 'SQL_LIKE_ESCAPE_CLAUSE' will return a space (" "). It can be used if the DBMS doesn't support SQL escape patterns.

• Patch null size of SQL_CHAR on - If set, this option overrides the size of SQL_CHAR column type returned by the database with the value set in the text box (in bytes). With a default value of 0, the driver uses the size returned by the database.

Click Next to continue to the Compatibility dialog . The Compatibility dialog enables you to set additional parameters to enhance compatibility with applications:

• Disable AutoCommit - Changes the default commit behaviour of the OpenLink driver. The default mode is AutoCommit (box unchecked).

• Disable Rowset Size Limit - Disables a limitation enforced by the cursor library. This limitation is enforced by default. It prevents the driver from claiming all available memory in the event that a resultset generated from an erroneous query is very large. The limit is normally never reached.

• Multiple Active Statements Emulation - Enables use of Multiple Active statements in an ODBC application even if the underlying database does not allow this, as it is emulated in the driver.

• SQL_DBMS Name - Manually overrides the SQLGetInfo(SQL_DBMS_NAME) response returned by the driver. This is required for products like Microsoft InfoPath for which the return the value should be "SQL Server".

Click Next to continue.

Click on the Test Data Source button to verify that a successful connection can be made to the database.

You have established a connection:

Proceed to Commercial Licensing Documentation:

Should you decide to purchase a commercial license at the end of your evaluation period, be sure to consult our documentation which explains the placement and uptake of commercial license files and the use of our OpenLink License Manager technology: License Technology & Application