The Two Managed Providers

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ADO.NET, the successor to Microsoft's highly successful ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), offers two Managed Providers. These providers are similar in their object model, but are chosen at design-time based on the data provider being used. The SQL Managed Provider offers a direct link into Microsoft's SQL Server database application (version 7.0 or higher), while the OleDb Managed Provider is used for all other data providers. Following is a brief description of each of the Managed Providers. Throughout this chapter we will show you how the Managed Providers work, and specify when a particular object, property, method or event is unique to only one of the Managed Providers.

OleDb Managed Provider

The OleDb Managed Provider uses native OLEDB and COM Interop to establish a connection to a data store and negotiate commands. The OleDb Managed Provider is the data access provider to use when you are working with data from any data source that is not Microsoft's SQL Server 7.0 or higher. To use the OleDb Managed Provider, you must import the System.Data.OleDb namespace.

SQL Managed Provider

The SQL Managed Provider is designed to work directly with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 or greater. It connects and negotiates directly with SQL Server without using OLEDB. This provides a better performance model than the OleDb Managed Provider, but it's restricted to use with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 or higher. To use the SQL Managed Provider, you must import the System.Data.SqlClient namespace.

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