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I am using Oracle data provider for .net to try to connect to the oracle DB, to add a ADO entity data framework model file, but i am getting the error below. ORA-12154: TNS could not resolve the connect identifier specified

when I try to tnsping the data source name that i provide in the VS dialog i can successfully resolve it to the correct ip and host names. But for some reason the Oracle Data provider doesn't seem to be reading it from from my C:\oracle\product\10.2.0\client_1\NETWORK\ADMIN\tnsnames.ora any ideas ? i am using vs 2010 with the 32 bit oracle data provider from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/dotnet/index-085163.html

i can use the same TNS names on different sql client like sqlDbx it works smoothly on the same machine.

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up vote 1 down vote accepted

If you set a system environment variable TNS_ADMIN to the location of your tnsnames.ora file, does that help?

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