Hi,

I was reading MSDN's custom provider articles and wondering why TheBeerHouse is not using .NET's ProviderBase, since it's already there available to use, and the framework will call ProviderBase's Initialize(...) method automatically for provider initialization. Why create DataAccess class rather than using ProviderBase? I noticed that DataAccess has some helper functions such as ExcecuteNonQuery..., but other than that, are there any other benefits? Maybe I'm missing some pieces, but any information will be really appreciated

Link to the article I was reading:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479038.aspx

Beier

I don't think of a DAL as being a provider. A provider is a type of plugin that allows you to access a certain kind of data. A provider can go between the DB and the DAL. But I don't think descending from ProviderBase brings any benefit to the DAL itself.

Inheritance is useful where you want to leverage existing functionality and extend it. The Initialize method itself doesn't seem to offer much of what we'd need.

Try creating your own DAL this way and see if it buys you anything in the end. It might, but I just can't see it right now.

Eric

Hi Eric, thanks for the reply and insightful thought. I agree with you that DAL and provider are not exactly the same thing. IMHO Provider is more like a helper that bridge DAL and BLL. I was trying to think out what .NET's pure provider can provide other than initialize but haven't come up with anything essential. I think I'll stick with BeerHouse way.

Beier

Beier Cai