Chapter 28. Creating a Custom ADO.NET Data Provider

IN BRIEF

As you saw in the previous chapter, using the ADO.NET data providers gives you a consistent user experience, whether you're connecting to some OLE DB data source, SQL, Oracle, or even an ODBC data source. The goal of the consistent data provider model is that programmers need to learn to use only one set of interfaces, regardless of which database they are accessing.

You've seen it from the consumer point of view, and this chapter will show you ADO.NET data providers from the perspective of the data provider. In this chapter, you will see a lot of code for creating your own custom data provider. In addition to the code for a custom provider, you will also see the details on all the interfaces required to implement a provider, as well as guidelines for when you should and should not implement your own custom provider.

WHAT YOU NEED

REQUIRED SOFTWARE	.NET Framework SDK v1.1 VSVisual Studio .NET 2003 w/with C# Installedinstalled
RECOMMENDED HARDWARE	PC that meets .NET SDK minimum requirements
SKILLS REQUIRED	C# and .NET Familiarityfamiliarity Familiarity with web services (see Chapters 18 and 32)

CREATING A CUSTOM ADO.NET DATA PROVIDER AT A GLANCE

Custom Data Providers		555
	When to Create a Data Provider	555	Sample Data Provider Scenario	556
	Steps for Implementing a Custom Data Provider	556	Overview of the Remote Data Provider	557
Implementing IDataParameter and IDataParameterCollection		558
	The IDataParameter Interface	558	The RDPParameter Class	559
	The IDataParameterCollection Interface	559	The RDPParameterCollection Class	563
Implementing a Custom Connection		565
	The IDbConnection Interface	566	The RDPConnection Class	566
Implementing a Custom Command		569
	The IDbCommand Interface	569	The RDPCommand Class	570
Implementing a Custom DataReader		575
	The IDataReader Interface	575	The RDPDataReader Class	576
Implementing a Custom DataAdapter DataAdapter		582
	The IDbDataAdapter Interface	582	The RDPDataAdapter Class	582
Summary		587