Why Does ODP.NET Have Async Methods If They're Not Asynchronous?

The Oracle Client (ODP.NET) that we are using to build a major web project put us in a really stupid bind last week, ultimately causing me to waste two days in search of something that wasn't really going to work in the first place. I'm on something of an

Explaining Async and Await in ASP.NET

Once in a while, the technical presentations [http://www.exceptionnotfound.net/why-you-should-be-giving-technical-presentations/] that I conduct at my day job force me to learn something new, something I'd never had to deal with before. This happened just last week, when my coworkers voted for the topic of the next session to