What are advantages and disadvantages of Microsoft-provided data provider classes in ADO.NET?

Alok Tomar
Oct 31, 2008

first we look into the hierarchy of microsoft-provided data providers. we examin the connection objects
Idbconnection (the parent class)

sqlconnection
oracleconnection
accessconnection
oledbconnection

these are some derived classes used for establishing connection objects. but these are database specific classes. keeping this into mind we can infer that-

Database specific provider can instantiate specific connection to database
these are optimized to perform fast as compared to parent classes they are derived from.
the main disadvantage is that if we have hardcoded such specific providers in our application and there is a possibility of migrating to another database from the current we are using, we have to alter our data access layer.
but applying design patterns such as factory method or abstract factory solves this problem.

ThamizhJain
Aug 28, 2008

ADO.Net is used mainly for disconnected data architecture. So it can handle applications from single tier to multi-tier. Even web applications will be compatible with ado.net. Migrating data from DBMS to RDBMS is quite easy in ado.net. Ensuring data security when travels from one end to another. The only disadvange is that we have to buy this tool from Microsoft.

Mahesh Chand
Jul 16, 2006

This is a test answer

Jul 13, 2006

SQLServer.NET data provider is high-speed and robust, but requires SQL Server license purchased from Microsoft. OLE-DB.NET is universal for accessing other sources, like Oracle, DB2, Microsoft Access and Informix, but it’s a .NET layer on top of OLE layer, so not the fastest thing in the world. ODBC.NET is a deprecated layer provided for backward compatibility to ODBC engines.