Instant Oracle Database and PowerShell How-to - Instant Oracle Database and PowerShell How-to - page 4

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To discard the output of the assembly load, use either [void] or a pipe to Out-Null .
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load($odpAssemblyName) | Out-Null
[void][System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load($odpAssemblyName)
Alternatively, capture the output to a variable and format another way:
$odpAsm = [System.Reflection.Assembly]::Load($odpAssemblyName)
"Loaded Oracle.DataAccess from {0}" -f $odpAsm.Location
Here are three other ways of loading ODP.NET:
F [Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("Oracle.DataAccess")
$filename = "C:\Oracle\product\11.2.0\client_1\odp.net\bin\2.x\
Oracle.DataAccess.dll"
F [void][Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile($filename)
F [void][Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFrom($filename)
LoadWithPartialName is convenient but blindly loads an unknown version of ODP.NET .
Both LoadFile and LoadFrom can also lead to issues. See http://msdn.microsoft.
com/en-us/library/dd153782.aspx for assembly loading best practices. Using Load
with an explicit, full assembly identity is safest, despite more typing.
Now, let's ind out how to get help with ODP.NET , and some other ways of accessing Oracle.
Getting help with ODP.NET
Oracle's ODP documentation can be accessed via the Start Menu, with Windows Explorer
under ORACLE_BASE\ORACLE_HOME\ODACDoc\DocumentationLibrary , or online at
http://docs.oracle.com .
Also, PowerShell's Get-Member (alias gm ) is useful for inspecting available members of
objects; for example, use $conn | gm to list all the properties and methods available
on the OracleConnection that was created.
Loading ODP.NET 4.0
The ODAC installation installs two versions of Oracle.DataAccess, one for .NET Framework
2 and another for PowerShell 2.0, which was built before .NET Framework 4.0. As such, you
cannot directly load Version 4.0 assemblies by default. Generally the Version 2.0 will sufice.
If there are speciic 4.0 features you want, you have a few options:
F Change a global registry setting that forces all .NET 2.0 assemblies to run under .NET
4 (from PowerShell or otherwise); this has a number of serious consequences and
should almost always be avoided.