I had set up the feature on 8.1.7 to allow accessing SQL Server data from Oracle running on AIX. You have to obtain, that is, buy a third party supplied ODBC driver on all platforms except Windows where one is provided. Data Direct was the vendor I tested with. We successfully performed simple select, insert, and updates before the developers decided that wanted to use a Java program. The Data Direct driver did not require an agent to be running on the Windows platform. Read the metalink documents on setting this up carefully. HTH -- Mark D Powell -- -----Original Message----- From: oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:oracle-l-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Andreas.Haunschmidt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 6:05 AM To: oracle-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Oracle heterogeneous services - Experiences anyone? Dear List Members! A collegue of mine not having access to this list=20 needs to exchange data between an Oracle 9 and a Microsoft SQL-Server = database.=20 As far as I know he needs only to access SQL-Server data from Oracle. He would like to know about the experiences people made using Oracle heterogeneous services for that purpose. I would be thankful if anyone liked to share his/her experiences, and knowledge about reliability, performance,pitfalls and other = "special"=20 features in a production environment. Thanks in advance -- Andreas Haunschmidt voestalpine Informationstechnologie GmbH / Linz Abt. TWI VOEST-ALPINE-Str. 3, Postfach 3, 4031 Linz, =D6sterreich Tel.: +43-732-6585-3386 Fax: +43-732-6980-9411 E-Mail: andreas.haunschmidt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.voestalpine.com/informationstechnologie =20 =20 -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l