21.2. Understanding ADO.NET Data Providers
Unlike other database APIs you might have used in the past, ADO.NET does not provide a single set of types that communicate with multiple database management systems (DBMSs). Rather, ADO.NET supports multiple data providers, each of which is optimized to interact with a specific DBMS. The first benefit of this approach is that you can program a specific data provider to access any unique features of a particular DBMS. The second benefit is that a specific data provider can connect directly to the underlying engine of the DBMS in question without an intermediate mapping layer standing between the tiers.
Simply put, a data provider is a set of types defined in a given namespace that understand how to ...
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