I have to connect Oracle 11g DB from .NET code. For that purpose I installed ODP.NET bur after reading some forum posts I recognized that I need Oracle Client installation too.
Is that true? I see that the Oracle Client has a size of ca. 2GB!!! Do I really need to install such a huge client only to be able to connect Oracle DBs?
The ODP.NET does require native OCI DLLs (~130 MB).
Probably the easiest way to get all the necessary files is to download the "Oracle Data Access Components with XCopy deployment" from oracle.com.
For your reference, the following DLLs are used by ODP.NET at run-time:
oci.dll
Oracle.DataAccess.dll (the managed ODP.NET assembly itself)
orannzsbb11.dll
oraociei11.dll
OraOps11w.dll
BTW, you'll need to be careful whether you are using 32-bit or 64-bit native Oracle DLLs - you must match them with the "bitness" of your managed code. This is especially tricky if you are building for "Any CPU" so the bitness is not fixed.