The ODBC .NET Data Provider

ADO.NET includes a .NET data provider designed to communicate with databases using ODBC drivers: the ODBC .NET Data Provider. If you want to access a database that does not have its own .NET data provider (and you’re not working with an Office Access database), you should use this .NET data provider.

The ODBC .NET Data Provider was not part of the initial release of the .NET Framework, but it was integrated into the .NET Framework as of version 1.1. You no longer need to download the provider separately, nor do you need to add a project reference to the assembly because the ODBC .NET Data Provider is integrated into System.Data.dll.

The code samples in this section assume that you’ve added a reference to the ODBC .NET ...

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