Hi,

I am new to web design & have had a break from programming for 5 years (used to do a bit before - vb & some sql).

I was recently asked to design a web site - so I bought & read your book Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 from cover to cover. Thanks it was quite helpful.

I am now reading your ASP.net 2.0 Instant results & have been desiging a web site that using CMS logic that I learned from your CMS chapter.

My Web Host only supports SQL ODBC connections (webhost4life). Is there a big difference between using the System.Data.SqlClient & the system.data.oledb providers?

I did not notice this covered in either of these two books?

Can any one point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

Mike

There's no significant difference for most purposes. The biggest differences are either hidden or are related to the dialect of SQL you need to use. The former you don't care about; the latter you are presumably aware of.

There *ARE* libraries out there (check out "Patterns and Practices" on MSDN) that allow you to put an intermediate layer between your code and the actual DB, so that you can easily change from one DB to another without recoding (but of course no matter what you do, you'll almost always find SQL changes needed). But if you don't anticipate needing to change, just stick with the OleDb classes.

Thanks for the response.

I guess I am really showing that I don't understand why an SQL database on a host's site needs to be accessed via ODBC.

Neither do I.... ;)

It may be a configuration issue. They may be able to manage your DSN connection centrally, without requiring you to have a user name and password. That's all I can think of.

Many other hosters just allow you to use SQL Server, so it's worth asking your host if you can change it somehow.

And yes, working with the Odbc* objects is pretty similar to the Sql* objects.

Imar


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Imar Spaanjaars
http://Imar.Spaanjaars.Com
Everyone is unique, except for me.
Author of Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 : in C# and VB, ASP.NET 2.0 Instant Results and Dreamweaver MX 2004
Want to be my colleague? Then check out this post.

Just to clarify for anyone reading the original post.

Whist my host suggested using an odbc connection string, I was able to use the standard System.Data.SqlClient connection string.

So I was wrong in my statement about having to use ODBC.