I don't think MySQL or Oracle are good choices-

MySQL doesn't have a data provider for .NET I don't belive- I thought I saw some questions about that.

Oracle is still very convoluted in how you connect- at least that's what my oracle people are telling me.. You have to install the Oracle Client...create a special file.. configure the system to connect.

So Access or MS SQL Server I think are the best choices... and Access isn't good for anything but the smallest site. In 99% of the cases MS SQL Server 2000 is the right choice for most web sites - especially if you don't have to deal with Legacy Data.


Hal Levy
Web Developer, PDI Inc.

NOT a Wiley/Wrox Employee

Oh I see...

from your reply, I can guess that MS SQLServer 7.0 or MS SQLServer 2000 is actually the DBMS by Microsoft, rite? and MySQL might be other company's product... rite? Please correct me if I am wrong, :)

Am I asking too many questions actually? Because I am first time involving in this kind of forum, really don't know what should be asked or what should not be asked.

You are correct- BOth Access and SQL Server 2000 (7.0 is no longer availible- it's replaced by 2000) are Microsoft products.

Oracle *COULD* play nicely with Microsoft ADO.NET - they just choose not to.



Hal Levy
Web Developer, PDI Inc.

NOT a Wiley/Wrox Employee

I have yet to see on this thread what appears to me to be a necessary clarification for something that seems to be confusing a few people:

ADO.NET is the collection of classes that are used for data access. ADO.NET is not a data access provider. It is the .NET replacement for ADO (where we used ADODB.Connection and ADODB.Recordset in ASP and VB).

Within the System.Data namespace are the namespaces for the different data providers that have been mentioned (System.Data.SqlClient, System.Data.OleDb, System.Data.Odbc). These ARE data providers.

What people have been trying to say is that if you plan on using MSSQL Server, then you should use the SqlClient namespace for your data operations because the classes for connecting to MSSQL Server are built to work directly with the database server instead of going thru the "middleman" of the OLEDB or ODBC data access layer components of Windows. You can most certainly still use the System.Data.OleDB provider with SQL (and use the SQLOLEDB provider for Windows that comes with SQL), but it doesn't make sense and hurts performance. You could however use the System.Data.OleDb namespace classes with an Oracle database because there is no native .NET connectivity to Oracle. You would then use an Oracle provided OLEDB access provider such as "OraOLEDB.Oracle". (I believe you can get an "OracleClient" assembly of classes for .NET, I have never looked into it though. This may provider a performance enhancement similar to the SqlClient classes.)

I hope this helps to clarify what has been said in this thread.

According to my Oracle DBA here I don't have many options with Oracle. My searching online also found nothing but complex methods to talk to Oracle - all that required the install and config of the OraClient software- Much like an ODBC Connection.

Hal Levy
Web Developer, PDI Inc.

NOT a Wiley/Wrox Employee

Yes, that is how we have had to do it here. But that's only because we have to write applications that play nicely with either MSSQL or Oracle (or another OleDB provider supported datastore).

Perhaps we have both been missing something:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...acleclient.asp

Hal,

I just looked into it a bit more, and I found System.Data.OracleClient.dll in my 1.1 framework available reference list. So the other providers are available by default with inclusion of the reference to System.Data, but Oracle needs to be referenced manually.

I didn't read the reference at length yet... Does it still require the installation of the Oracle client software or will it work independent of it?



Hal Levy
Web Developer, PDI Inc.

NOT a Wiley/Wrox Employee

Hal,also MySQL has a special DataProvider for .NET(except OLEDB.NET)
I think Microsoft released it about two months ago.

--------------------------------------------
Mehdi.:)

I also haven't read the documentation at length. That's what I would hope would be the case.

I spoke to someone who reports that the .NET OracleClient only works with certain previous versions. The later versions (I don't recall from what version on) do NOT work with the classes in this namespace.