I need some clarification on whether Managed ODP.Net does or does not support the "TNS_ADMIN" environment variable.
In this (https://community.oracle.com/thread/2578660) archived discussion from Sep 7, 2013 the official answer say "This functionality existed in the beta code, but is no longer supported in production.". On the other hand on the feature request site, there is a request for specifically this feature (see https://apex.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=18357:39:110917326630457::NO::P39_ID:27442) with status "Feature Available in Production" which was last updated 11-JUL-13.
So I'm a bit confused and worried. We need at least some way to dynamically tell Managed ODP.Net which tnsnames.ora it should use. Right now (by lack of other means) we are using the TNS_ADMIN environment variable. We can't specify the desired path in the app.config or any other file because we don't know the path up-front. We use Managed ODP.Net with .Net plugins that are used by a native (Delphi) application. This host application decides which tnsnames.ora to use and tells the .Net plugins the path to that file. We're then setting the TNS_ADMIN environment variable before using Managed ODP.Net.
Now I'm worried that this feature was dropped or will be dropped in the future.
(I know, this use of TNS_ADMIN is a "workaround". It would really help to have some means so set the path directly in code somehow)
Thanks,
Markus