Oracle ODBC Access through Access

[stmontgo]

Good day,
I'm stuck allowing a user direct access to the db from outside of our firewall through ODBC and have run into a problem.

The user can connect through sql*plus fine and can even test the odbc connection (through data sources "test connection") but when they try and connect through MS ACCESS they get no listener (ORA-12541). Looking in the listener log of the server I can see the successfuly sql*plus connection but nothing logged for the Access attemp

I would be suspicious that the firewall has not been adequately modified but they can connect through sql*plus. Does odbc connect any differently than net8? I mean odbc using the net8 tnsnames, correct?

Any thoughts? tks

steve

[marist89]

Yes, the ODBC rides on top of SQL*Net. If they can connect via sqlplus, they should be able to connect via ODBC. I would check:
1. there isn't multiple Oracle clients installed on the workstation. This might give you multiple tnsnames.ora files and ORACLE_HOMEs which could confuse ODBC.
2. If your firewall is using a SQL*Net proxy, you're probably OK. However, if it is just using a port redirect, you will probably have to use something like Connection Manager.
3. If it's not an environment issue on the client, I would get your network guys involved. It sounds like a firewall issue to me, but it's strange that sqlplus connects fine.