ADO.NET Framework Data Providers

Data provider is used to connect to the database, execute commands and retrieve the record. It is lightweight component with better performance. It also allows us to place the data into DataSet to use it further in our application.

The .NET Framework provides the following data providers that we can use in our application.

.NET Framework Data Providers Objects

Following are the core object of Data Providers.

.NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server

Data provider for SQL Server is a lightweight component. It provides better performance because it directly access SQL Server without any middle connectivity layer. In early versions, it interacts with ODBC layer before connecting to the SQL Server that created performance issues.

The .NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server classes is located in the System.Data.SqlClient namespace. We can include this namespace in our C# application by using the following syntax.

using System.Data.SqlClient;  

This namespace contains the following important classes.

.NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle

It is used to connect with Oracle database through Oracle client. The data provider supports Oracle client software version 8.1.7 or a later version. This data provider supports both local and distributed transactions.

Oracle Data Provider classes are located into System.Data.OracleClient namespace. We must use both System.Data.OracleClient and System.data to connect our application with the Oracle database.

using System.Data;  
using System.Data.OracleClient;  

Which .NET Framework Data Provider is better

Selection of data provider is depends on the design and data source of our application. Choice of optimum .NET Framework data provider can improve the performance, capability and integrity of our application. The following table demonstrates advantages and disadvantages of data provider.