SQL Server 2022 create external data source with Oracle TNS files (introduced with CU2)

[Stefanssce]

Hi,

I am trying to set up an external data source to connect to Oracle. This works fine when I specify the Oracle hostname like "LOCATION = 'oracle://oracle1:1521".

In our setup we normally us TNS where there are two servers specified. oracle1 and oracle2. In case of a failover the connection uses the server which is online. In the working example above I cannot use of this option and the external table will fail if the database is running on oracle2.

I can read in the documentation that with CU2 in SQL 2022 there was an option introduced to use TNS and I hope this will solve this problem. However, the documentation is vague about how to use it and I do not find other documentation about the "feature".

Could anyone give an example how to use this option to be able to use the "Oracle" failover option?

Thanks.
Stefan

[#2 · Accepted solution]

After a lot of try and error I managed to get it working. Here the example which might help others:

--SQL
CREATE EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE OracleSource
WITH ( LOCATION = 'oracle://ORA_TEST' , connection_options = 'ServerName=ORA_TEST;TNSNamesFile=C:\ORA\TNS_ADMIN\tnsnames.ora',
PUSHDOWN = ON,
CREDENTIAL = cred_oracle)

--TNSNAMES.ORA which is store in C:\ORA\TNS_ADMIN

ORA_TEST =
(DESCRIPTION =
(CONNECT_TIMEOUT = 3)
(ENABLE = BROKEN)
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = oracle1.yourdomain.net )(PORT = 1521))
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = oracle2.yourdomain.net )(PORT = 1521))
(CONNECT_DATA =
(SERVER = DEDICATED)
(SERVICE_NAME = ORA_TEST)
)
)