Q:

Can I use 32 bit Oracle Developer Tools with x64 ODAC in VS2010?

From the Oracle website here:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/windows/downloads/index-090165.html
This is for their latest Oracle Data Access Components, 64-bit ODAC 11.2 Release 4 (11.2.0.3.0) for Windows x64.  I want to use the developer tools (ODT) but they aren't available in 64 bit (probably because VS2010 is still 32-bit).  From the site:
Important: The 32-bit Oracle Developer Tools for Visual Studio download is required for Entity Framework design-time features. The above download fully supports Entity Framework deployment, but does not contain design-time tools. 
I don't use EF (I use the Mindscape LightSpeed product as it's usually 3 or 4 years ahead of EF) but the principle is the same - VS2010 and LightSpeed are 32-bit apps and can't load/use x64 libs.
I would like to use the 32-bit tools (ODT) to develop my app and deploy the app using the x64 ODAC.  Has anyone done this?  Can it be done?  Anybody?
If it matters, this is for a WCF service running on a virtual Windows Server 2008 R2 machine. What I have done semi-successfully is force everybody to 32-bit operation, but that seems a little silly if 64 bit is supported as they claim it is.
Thanks in advance,
Dave

A:

What the Oracle site mentions is that they have provided the ODAC components for both 32 and 64 bit, but have the Visual Studio design tools for only 32 bit.
Since you are not using EF, I am guessing you are interested in using ODP.NET components with LightSpeed. 
For this scenario, you could go ahead by installing both 64 and 32 bit of ODP.NET on the development system and allowing the application to run in native mode on the deployment systems (the application will select the 64 or 32 bit ODP component based on the platform it is running on).
Check RealFiction blog and Semaphoremd blog for detail about installing the client tools for both 64 and 32 bit in parallel. Basically proper way to go about installing them in separate folders and creating symbolic links to the appropriate folder from %windir%\system32 and %windir%\SysWOW64. Thus allowing the WOW64 to take care of allocating the proper components based on the running application.

