Oracle Database Discussions

Hello guys. I am new to Oracle but have read up quite a bit and I think I'm not too far from the answer.

Our company has been using Oracle for a while now and their typical method has been to deploy WinForms apps via Terminal Server, where the terminal server has the full blown Oracle Client installed (thus a tnsnames.ora file) as well as whatever data provider is built in their application.

Here's my situation: I have a WPF (.Net 3.5 SP1, C#) application I would like to distribute on few machines using ClickOnce instead of Terminal Server. In addition, my application is using ODP.Net rather than the built-in .Net oracle data provider.

Am I understanding correctly that embedding this library in my application is all the software I need? If so, here's where things get sticky - our DBAs don't want us sticking the DNS/ServerNames in our applications. They prefer to use the aliases so that the applications do not need to be recompiled when they make changes. Makes sense. So they use the tnsnames.ora file...

I'm sure you are picking up on it by now... in terminal server deployment, this is no big deal... you have one server with the full blown Oracle Client redistributable installed and you setup tnsnames.ora to include your SID that your application will need to reference. In ClickOnce, you cannot assume (nor would you want) your end-users to have the full-blown Oracle Client on their desktops...

So my question is... how can I deploy my applications and accomplish the following:

1. Use ODP.Net
2. Application's connection string uses an SID/alias (ie. tnsnames.ora) rather than hard host:port combo
3. Make sure no user does not need full client installation

Any thoughts on how to accomplish this?

Have a great memorial day weekend.
III