title: Getting BIDS 2008 R2 to connect to Oracle using MSDAORA on Windows 8
body: <p>I have a new dev machine, and I need to support legacy SSIS packages.  The new machine is Windows 8 64 bit with a SSD primary drive (C:) and a regular HDD for data (D:).  On it, I have installed BIDS 2008 R2 (and all the tricks to get it to work with TFS2010), as well as VS2010, ODAC 32 bit and 64 bit (I think??), Oracle Client (SQLDeveloper).</p>
  
  <p>I can get the following to connect just fine to an Oracle database:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>VS2010 with MSDAORA</li>
  <li>VS2010 with ODAC</li>
  <li>VS2010 with ADO.NET</li>
  <li>Test connection using .udl file with Oracle OLE DB Provider (MS provider does not show up as an option here)</li>
  <li>SQLDeveloper (Oracle's Client Tool)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>What I CAN'T seem to do is get BIDS 2008 R2 to connect to Oracle using ANY method (MSDAORA, ADO.NET, ODAC).</p>
  
  <p>The problem seems isolated to my machine, I can otherwise open, view, validate, connect and run these packages on other machines with no issues.</p>
  
  <p>I have tried the following:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Ensured any/all TNSNAMES files are correct and identical (taking working copies from other machines, and let's not forget, this works fine in VS2010)   </li>
  <li>Created ORACLE_HOME and TNS_ADMIN Environment Variables and pointed them to various directories within D:\app\username\product\11.2.0</li>
  <li>Checked registry manually to make sure no other references to ORACLE except for the entries in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ORACLE</li>
  <li>Unistalled/Reinstalled SQL Server 2008 R2 components </li>
  <li>Every "solution" offered in every thread in every search I have tried</li>
  <li>Thrown chicken bones and offered sacrifices to pagan deities</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>After each attempt at a fix, I still get the following error when trying to Preview a SQL Command in the Data Flow:</p>
  
  <p><em>An OLE DB record is available. Source: "Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Oracle" Hresult: 0x80004005 Description: "Error while trying to retrieve text for error ORA-01019"</em></p>
  
  <p>Yes, I know I need to drop MSDAORA in favor of ODAC, and if ODAC worked in BIDS 2008 R2 I would certainly do it.  However, I can't get anything to connect to Oracle there (even though, as mentioned above, it connects fine in various other tools)</p>
  
  <p>I have two "client_<em>n</em>" directories in D:\app\username\product\11.2.0. As mentioned, I have tried pointing my environment variables to various paths inside. It seems like the correct path for ORACLE_HOME should be just D:\app\username\product\11.2.0, correct?</p>
  
  <p>Has anyone had any luck getting BIDS 2008 R2 to connect to Oracle while on WINDOWS 8 with VS2010 also installed?  It seems to me like it's a simple Oracle connection issue, I just don't know enough about Oracle to troubleshoot.</p>
  
  <p>Any other ideas to try?</p>