Advanced Data Access with ADO.NET and Oracle

Bill Hamilton

August 2004

Applies to: Microsoft ADO.NET 1.1 Oracle data types

Summary: Learn how to use ADO.NET 1.1 to retrieve data from complex Oracle data types. (28 printed pages)

IntroductionAnyBFILEIntervalLOBRAWREF CURSORROWIDTimestampUriTypeUser DefinedXmlTypeConclusionRelated Books

Introduction

The .NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle does not always make it easy to retrieve data stored in complex ways. This article discusses how to access data stored in the Oracle-specific data types listed in the following table:

Data TypeDescription

Any	Data types used to explicitly define data types that can hold any type of data.
BFile	A pointer to an operating system file containing unstructured binary data stored outside of the Oracle database.
Interval	Data types that specify a time interval.
LOB	Data types that store unstructured binary data.
RAW	Data types that store binary data that is not interpreted by Oracle.
REF CURSOR	A PL/SQL pointer to a SQL cursor used to return a row from the database.
ROWID	Data types that represent the specific address of a row in the database.
Timestamp	Data types that extend the functionality of the DATE data type.
URI	Data types that store Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) that reference a document or a specific part of a document.
User-defined	Complex data types created from basic Oracle data types and user-defined data types.
XMLType	Data types that store XML data.

The System.Data.OracleClient namespace contains types used to access Oracle data source using the.NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle. In addition to Oracle-specific versions of the DataReader, DataAdapter, Command, and Connection classes, the namespace contains types to support and facilitate working with Oracle data types. These are listed in the following table:

TypeDescription

OracleBFile	Class that represents an Oracle BFILE data type.

Advanced Data Access with ADO.NET and Oracle

Contents

Introduction