• As of today, both Microsoft's and Oracle's ODBC drivers both work with ASP/ADO.
• Oracle's new ODBC drivers come in different versions corresponding to different versions of ORACLE (7/8). For example, for ORACLE 8.0.5,the driver is {Oracle ODBC Driver} 8.00.58.00 SQORA32.DLL 01/04/00. Note that the new Oracle ODBC drivers are installed via Oracle's install program. Check out the following URLs -
  http://www.oracle.com/database/features/index.html?/database/features/odbc.html
  http://technet.oracle.com/software/utilities/software_index.htm
• BLOB (Binary Large Object) type support of the new Oracle drive is as follows -
  BLOB, LONGRAW - 205
  MLSLABEL - Not supported
  CLOB, NCLOB - 201
  BFILE - 200
  RAW - 204
  Check out the datatype program  to scan the Oracle DB's ADO data type using the new Oracle ODBC driver.
• While Microsoft's Oracle ODBC driver works with static cursor (1), the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Oracle only works with forward only cursor (0).
• Oracle has a default date format of "DD-MMM-YY". The TO_DATE function is used in SQL statements to handle dates. ASPDB recognized the dbDBType="Oracle" and convert the format internally hence the same set of code will work for all databases. (Note - Same support for SYBASE). See the following Oracle date example which uses the hh:mm:ss. Note that the internal default for Oracle date is TO_DATE('[DD-MMM-YY HH:MM:SS]','DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS').
• Always specify dbDBType="Oracle" when working with Oracle database.
• Implementing calculated field in ORACLE as the same format as  ACCESS and SQL. See example in dbNameMap.
• Oracle's stored procedure and package formats are different then MS-SQL. There are many examples supplied in this area.

• Calling Oracle's SP with the wrong command type will result in error or a very long wait.

• Too many input parameters in a package will kill it. Both Oracle server and client have been tested against ASPdb and they all work fine.
• Make sure you log in as the right user in order to execute the SP.
• Try both ODBC and OLE DB drivers when things are not working right.
      connStr = "Driver={Microsoft ODBC for Oracle}; Server=dell500; UID=HOTEL; PWD=hotel"
      connStr="Provider=MSDAORA; data source=dell500; user id=HOTEL; password=hotel"
• Oracle drivers don't support the retrieval of multiple recordsets hence the dbStoredProcRS property does not work with Oracle.

•  When ASPdb is accessing a database with system privileges like system/manager, you must specify the table owner. For example:
  
  X.dbDSN = "DSN=Oracle; uid=system; pwd=manager"  
  X.dbSQL=”SELECT * FROM DEMO.CUSTOMER”

  If dbSelectBox is used then the allowable Table Owner(s) can be specified in the 4^th parameter of the dbTables property. For example if you log in as userid/password = Scott/Tiger, the table owner should be SCOTT, the Microsoft ODBC driver will return all the tables owned by both DEMO and SCOTT.  To compensate for this and only show SCOTT’s tables, use this parameter to limit the “Allowable” owner to SCOTT:

     X.dbTables=”SelectBoxSize, SelectBoxTitle, SelectBoxButton, SCOTT”

  The delimiter of this parameter is “+”. For example,

     X.dbTables=”SelectBoxSize, SelectBoxTitle, SelectBoxButton, SCOTT+DEMO”  
  
  will show all tables owned by SCOTT and DEMO.  
  

• Similarly, specify the tablename in the edit parameters as owner.table. For example:  
  X.dbEditParams = "TableName=DEMO.CUSTOMER, TableTag=border=1, BookMarkFlds=0"  

• If you are using the dbQuickProps property, make sure you change the default Group delimiter because the DSN contains (;). For example:
     X.dbQuickProps="(/,)1/DSN=Oracle805; uid=scott; pwd=tiger/ customer/ dual-horiz/ 4,auto/ std/ image_dir/ Oracle"

•  Check out the WROX's book - "Professional ADO RDS Programming with ASP". There are two chapters on Oracle and ASP.
• Make sure Oracle is started before using it !
  

Updating Scott/Tiger's EMP DB HIREDATE with Date containing HH:MM:SS

<% Set X = Server.CreateObject("ASP.DB") X.dbDSN="DSN=Ora805; UID=scott; PWD=tiger" X.dbDbType="Oracle"  'This declaration is important. X.dbUnit = 1 X.DbMode = "Grid" X.dbSQL = "($~)SELECT EMP.EMPNO, EMP.ENAME, EMP.JOB, EMP.MGR, " &_ "EMP.HIREDATE, " &_ "EMP.SAL, EMP.COMM, EMP.DEPTNO FROM EMP ORDER BY EMP.EMPNO" X.dbNavigationItem="top, bottom, next, prev, update" X.dbMagicCell="4,,Format=[mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss];" 'X.dbOptions="(;~)DateFormat=TO_DATE('[DD-MMM-YYYY HH:MM:SS]','DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS')"  'This is default for Oracle. No need to put it in. Just define dbDBType="Oracle". X.dbEditParams="TableName=SCOTT.EMP,BookMarkFlds=0,TableTag=BORDER=2," X.dbEditFlds="1,2,3,4,5,6,7"  X.dbDebug=101      'debug the Edit SQL statement X.ASPDB %>

Free format MS type date can be entered in the Edit Screen. Note that the date on screen (11/12/79 11:15:30PM) is formatted according to the format string inside the [...] tag which is (DD-MMM-YYYY HH:MM:SS). The entire DateFormat string is then submitted to the Edit SQL statement. Debug 101 will reveal that the Edit Update SQL is - Edit SQL=UPDATE SCOTT.EMP SET ENAME = 'SMITH', JOB = 'CLERK', MGR = 7902 , HIREDATE = TO_DATE('12-Oct-1979 23:15:35','DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS'), SAL = 800 , COMM = Null , DEPTNO = 20 WHERE EMPNO = 7369

Use this program to check Oracle's datatype