I am developing an application that uses the MSADORA OleDB provider to connect to an Oracle8i database (Windows2K, MDAC 2.6, Oracle 8.1.7). However when I deploy this application to a client site the application will not connect.

The client can connect with SQL Plus and with a VB Test application that uses the same connect string as my application.

The only difference I can see between my environment and the client's is that they use Oracle Names server and I use TNS Naming for connect information to oracle.

I have seen similar posts to this forum about connection. One referenced problems with registry not being updated after installation of MDAC. This actually did turn out to be a problem on the client machine until I had them fix the registrty. But one particular post to this forum made this comment:

"...Furthermore, once the changes are made, the OLE DB won't work until you've connected at least once using ODBC. "

Can this really be true?

Has anybody else had problems connecting to Oracle using Oracle Names?

...this problem is killing me...somebody please help....