Does the Managed Oracle ODP.NET driver utilize network encryption?

Question

I've read recently that Oracle supports network encryption between Oracle clients and servers. I assume that if servers support this, clients can accomplish connections in the full Oracle client drivers that are used from various Oracle data access provider libraries.

However, my application is using the more independent Managed ODP.NET driver from Oracle, which does not require the full Oracle client install. Does anyone know if this driver supports network encryption?

This page seems to offer advice, but doesn't specifically call out the Managed ODP.NET drivers.

And this unanswered thread seems to indicate that it isn't supported. If that's the case, will the connection fail entirely? Before I go trial and error my way through this issue, I was hoping to find some definite documentation.

Answer 1

Oracle have just (Oct 2015) released ODAC 12c Release 4.

Release announcement

This includes the latest Oracle Managed DataAccess Provider, which now supports Network Data Encryption (NDE).

(The Odp.Net Managed lib has not yet been pushed to the NuGet package repository as of 14 Oct 2015).

The Odp.Net Managed Provider Release 4 Package is now available on the NuGet package repository as of 15 Oct 2015.

Note that as this NDE functionality is part of ASO, you need to have an Oracle Enterprise Licence to use it in production.

Connecting to an Oracle DB using NDE

Configuring NDE

Answer 2

cue sad music

Found the answer in the driver's readme document. (located at \odp.net\doc\readme.htm in the downloaded archive.

ASO encryption (ODP.NET, Managed Driver) -- There is no support for Oracle Advanced Security Option (ASO) encryption. Setting SQLNET.ENCRYPTION_SERVER to "required" is not supported, resulting in client connection establishment failure. Not setting SQLNET.ENCRYPTION_SERVER or setting it to any other valid value are supported.