Essential ADO.NET

3.1. .NET Data Providers and the Connected Model

As mentioned in Chapter 2, the connected part of ADO.NET features data providers, a new model for using databases. Microsoft ships two data providers with .NET: the SqlClient data provider for SQL Server 7.0 and later, and the OleDb data provider for OLE DB data sources. A data provider for ODBC data sources is available as a Microsoft Web release, as are the SqlXml managed data classes discussed in Chapter 7; other specialized providers from Microsoft, DataDirect Technologies (formerly MERANT DataDirect), and others will be available by the time you read this. APIs to abstract database access started with ODBC and include OLE DB, ADO (a library that sits atop OLE DB), and JDBC. They all abstract ...