Oracle Integration with Microsoft CRM – overview for developer
 by: Boris Makushkin

Oracle has huge number of installation worldwide and Microsoft Business Solutions CRM is gaining its market share on the CRM market – mostly for mid-size and small companies. Sometimes we see the situation when large company has Oracle-based business system – imaging you ship your goods worldwide and you do it in Oracle custom system for ten years. In this case - even if you are looking for budget CRM solution – you might still need integration between Oracle and Microsoft CRM, regardless of the fact that these are coming from different software application worlds: Microsoft and Java realms.

If you are developer – you should probably be informed about two solutions:

    * Microsoft SQL Linked Server approach – using ODBC driver to Oracle – create linked server in MS SQL Server 2000/7.0 and then use OPENQUERY, OPENROWSET technique to access Oracle data. You can create cross-platform Transact SQL Stored procedures or views to facilitate your development

    * Oracle Transparent Gateways and Generic Connectivity – these two give you control from Oracle side. If you feel that you are more comfortable with Java/Oracle – this is the way to go. Generic Connectivity gives you common solution to access database via ODBC and OLE DB mechanisms to FoxPro, Microsoft Access, etc. More interesting is second product - Oracle Transparent Gateways. Its components are created individually for each platform, resulting in more efficient and fast access and better performance.

Currently Oracle Transparent Gateways are available for the following platforms:

    * Oracle Transparent Gateway for Informix available on Solaris, HP/UX

    * Oracle Transparent Gateway for MS SQL Server available on NT.

    * Oracle Transparent Gateway for Sybase available on Solaris, HP/UX, NT, AIX, Tru64

    * Oracle Transparent Gateway for Ingres available on Solaris, HP/UX

    * Oracle Transparent Gateway for Teradata available on Solaris, NT, HP/UX

    * Oracle Transparent Gateway for RDB available on Alpha OpenVMS

    * Oracle Transparent Gateway for RMS available on Alpha OpenVMS

The disadvantage is the fact that these products are not available for all platforms and priced relatively high.

Happy developing and designing! If you would like us to do the job, give as a call 1-630.961.5918 or 1-866.528.0577 [email protected]

About The Author

Boris Makushkin is Lead Software Developer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, serving Chicago, California, Arizona, Colorado, New York, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Canada, Australia, UK, Russia, Europe and internationally ( http://www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Microsoft CRM SDK, Navision, C#, VB.Net, SQL, Oracle, Unix developer.

[email protected]