For clarity and ease of presentation, the reference development and application platform is assumed to be Microsoft Visual Studio version 6.0, Microsoft Windows NT version 4 (Service Pack 4), SQL Server 7.0, and Oracle 7.3. The Visigenic Software ODBC driver (version 2.00.0300) is used with Oracle 7.3, and the Microsoft Corporation ODBC driver (version 3.70) is used with SQL Server 7.0. Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 includes an OLE DB driver for Oracle, but that driver is not discussed extensively in this chapter.