>Stephen
>
>I know that I have to install the Oracle drivers, but I wondered if anyone had any tips/hints or if there was anything I needed to look out for.
>
>Thanks
>

Derek,
You not only have to install the Oracle drivers (you probably have at least one in the form of the Microsoft ODBC for Oracle driver), you have to install SQL*NET as well. This will install the software needed and make the configuration changes needed so your machine can talk to Oracle. This includes (but is not limited to):
1. Creating paths to the Oracle files
2. Creating registry entries to tell the Oracle files where to look for things
3. Creating TNSNames.Ora and SQLNet.Ora. TNSNames.Ora is used for looking up Oracle databases and getting IP addresses to them(if using TCPIP). SQLNet.Ora is the global configuration file.

Other than that, connecting to Oracle presents no more problems than any other client/server configuration.

Good luck!