Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio

Stardate 60112.0
I found this, and decided to download and install it. The first download was 24Mb, and when I ran it, it complained that VS 2003 was not installed (I have VS 2005). Back to the Oracle site, and I found the version for 2005 bundled with a bunch of other stuff. 283Mb all told. It took 2 hours to download, and about 5 minutes to install. I launched VS 2005, and tried to access the Oracle Explorer from the menu. It came back with 'Package Load Failure, do you want to disable loading this in the future?'. Silly me, I clicked yet. Searching on the net, I found a site describing the problem and solution. An install bug puts the .NET 1.1 assembly in for the .NET 2.0, so VS doesn't understand it. Running the command
gacutil /l Oracle.DataAccess
from the Visual Studio command prompt, and shore 'enuf:
Microsoft (R) .NET Global Assembly Cache Utility. Version 2.0.50727.42
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Global Assembly Cache contains the following assemblies:
Oracle.DataAccess, Version=2.102.2.20, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89b483f
429c47342, processorArchitecture=x86
Oracle.DataAccess, Version=1.102.2.20, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=89b483f
429c47342

Number of items = 2
two versions installed. Ok, run
gacutil /u Oracle.DataAccess
and both are removed. Search the hard disk for Oracle.DataAccess.dll, and find the 2.102.2.20 version. Use
gacutil /i (Oracle Home)/Oracle.DataAccess.dll, and it installs the proper one.
Launch VS 2005 again, but the problem now is I told it to skip loading the Oracle Explorer package. Run devenv /ResetSkipPkgs and it at least opens a window with Oracle Explorer. However, I can't connect to a database. I tried copying the TNSNAMES.ORA to the new , but no go. Ok, time to do this the old-fashioned way, and use the Net Configuration Utility that comes with Oracle. It seems to create the same TNSNAMES.ORA, but at least now I can connect.

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