Setting up Oracle Instantclient Basic

I have been working on setting up an oracle instant client basic connection, using the following article:

http://www.dbatoolz.com/t/installing-oracle-instantclient-basic-and-instantclient-sqlplus-on-win32.html

Ran into one problem which took me a little time to figure out. The article says to add an environment variable as a “User Variable”. Since I am running a web site that has an application pool running on the NETWORK SERVICE account, and it is not possible to log on using that account and set the User Variables, they will not be available to my web app.

The solution is to add all variables as System Variables (using the lower part of the Environment variables window).

Just to be safe, I also added a variable for “ORA_HOME” with the same value as the TNS_ADMIN environment variable, namely the path to the instantclient (in my case “instantclient_11_2”) folder.

System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException: Key not valid for use in specified state

I got this message after I created a new user profile on my virtual machine (VMWare), and tried to compile my ORM project (using Telerik OpenAccess ORM). The error was wrapped as: OpenAccess Error: Key not valid for use in specified state.

This is not a problem for OpenAccess only though. I’ve seen that it also may be a problem for other applications, like SQL Server Reporting Services.

The solution:

1. Go into the folder (Windows XP) at:
   <drive>:\Documents and Settings\<your windows user account name>\Application Data\Microsoft\Crypto\DSS\<your machine SID>\
2. Delete the file there. It should have some cryptic name (like a GUID).
3. Restart IIS (IISRESET).
4. Recompile. It worked for me.

 

References:

• http://www.sitefinity.com/devnet/forums/sitefinity-4-x/general-discussions/key-not-valid-for-use-in-specified-state.aspx
• http://www.willasrari.com/blog/key-not-valid-for-use-in-specified-state/000151.aspx