title: 10.2g to 11.2g and Microsoft ODBC for Oracle issues
body: <p>My team are trying to migrate from ORACLE 10g to 11g. These are our system specs:</p>
  
  <p>Our current production server:</p>
  
  <pre><code>ORACLE 10.2g 
  ORACLE Application Express(3.0)
  Apache
  Red Hat 64 bit
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Our new server (not yet in production):</p>
  
  <pre><code>ORACLE 11.2g
  ORACLE Application Express (4.1.1)
  ORACLE HTTP Server 
  Red Hat 64 bit
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>We have managed to setup 11g, install APEX 4.1 and apply the recent patchset. 
  The only bit that's delaying us with our migration is that our business users have access to Crystal Reports XI, MS Access/Excel 2003 whcih they use to connect to our database. A typical user has Window XP SP 3 (32bit) operating system. At the moment we are using Microsoft ODBC for Oracle driver (version 2.575.1132.00) to connect to our 10g Database and have not had any issues. However when we try connect to 11g we keep getting ORA-03113: end-of-file on communication channel errors. In ORACLE SQL Developer, we're able to connect to our 11g instance using the "basic" connection. I have also used the "TNS" entries and that works well.</p>
  
  <p>I think the business users obtained the Microsoft ODBC for Oracle driver by installing ORACLE Discover 3.1.3.6 which is used for another Oracle DB. They also have Oracle Client 7.3.3 which I can see Oracle73 (2.00.03.01) mentioned in the ODBM Data Source Admin screen.</p>
  
  <p>We have tried googling for a result and after various tests, we have come to the conclusion that it is an ODBC driver issue. As far as our understand it ORACLE SQL Developer uses a different JAVA based driver to connect so it does not use the Microsoft version.</p>
  
  <p>Can someone confirm that our understanding is correct about there being a compatibility issues with Microsoft ODBC for Oracle driver (version 2.575.1132.00) and 11.2g?
  If so, what could you recommend a compatible driver to use with Crystal and Access/excel to extract the data? </p>
  
  <p>I think the business users obtained the Microsoft ODBC for Oracle driver by installing ORACLE Discover 3.1.3.6 which is used for another Oracle DB. They also have Oracle Client 7.3.3 which I can see Oracle73 (2.00.03.01) mentioned in the ODBM Data Source Admin screen.</p>