8i TAF Again

I have configured 8i standby with data guard and TAF. I get successful switchovers. However, only my unix connections (ie sqlplus sessions directly from the server "locate" the new primary database). My windows sessions continuously fail to connect. I have tried numerous configurations of tnsnames, opened a TAR and consulted with several knowledgeable people. Metalink is not responding and my other resources are telling my that reconnect through the windows platform is not possible, only on unix.

Please give me your opinion on this. Is reconnect possible on a windows platform, without distributing a new tnsnames.ora configuration at swithover, failover time? The documentation on TAF is so full of caveats, it doesn't read like the marketing brochure of TAF does.

I do not want to have to deploy new tnsnames files, deploy reconfigured web properties files, and other tasks in order for windows clients to connect to the new primary. Is this possible with 8i TAF? I am using sql*plus as my client testing tool both on windows and unix.

any ideas?

I agree - lots of caveats. I am not sure about 8i but I did get this to "work" on 9i in a windows environment - sporadically though. One of the big things that was a gotcha was that it "works" best in a shared server environment. Running this in a dedicated server environment seems to be an ongoing bug since it was first introduced.

Are you in running in dedicated mode? Might want to try shared then if not already