title: Does OCI (Oracle Call Interface) use COM (Component Object Model)?
body: <p>Does Oracle's OCI library actually use COM to interact with the Oracle database?</p>
  
  <p>We have a COM DLL that calls Oracle through OCI, and one of our customers is reporting the error message</p>
  
  <pre><code>ORA-24550: signal received: Unhandled exception: Code=e0434f4d Flags=1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Since the DLL does not use COM to call Oracle, but uses the OCI library to call Oracle, I can only conclude that one of the following is happening:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>The OCI library actually uses COM "under the hood" to get to the Oracle database.</p></li>
  <li><p>There is some sort of COM or .NET "add-on" that Oracle is calling, but I don't know anything about it.</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>I am hoping that it is #2, or at least isn't #1. If Oracle is not being called through COM, then it should not be returning an error with code e0434f4d (where 43, 4f, 4d are ASCII for C, O, M).</p>