Question:
When attempting a connection to Oracle using the BDE Oracle SQL Links driver, why am I getting the error, Vendor initialization failure: ORANT71.DLL, when the driver's Vendor Init parameter is set to ORA73.DLL [or ORA72.DLL]?
Answer:
The BDE always searches the path first for the DLL specified in the Vendor Init parameter and if that fails, the BDE searches, by default, for ORANT71.DLL. Thus the Vendor Init error means that the BDE failed to find and load the DLL you specified and ORANT71.DLL.