Entity Framework ODBC support
- Planning to use EF, so looking for different information, EF advantages and disadvanteges.
One of my questions is: Does EF support ODBC connection?
Answers
EF v1 has no direct support for OdbcConnection (in current release Microsoft ships EF-compatible providers for SQL Server and SQL Compact).
The reason for that is that EF requires the provider to supply metadata describing store types, built-in functions and primitive type mapping information - something that's not available through ODBC layer. There are also differences in SQL syntax supported by databases and the provider would have to compensate for those differences - again ODBC doesn't have enough information to do this in a general way.
If you want to target a specific database which has ODBC driver available, you can create EF-compatible provider by using the wrapping technique demonstrated in EF Sample Provider and EF Oracle Provider samples on MSDN Code Gallery.
All Replies
EF v1 has no direct support for OdbcConnection (in current release Microsoft ships EF-compatible providers for SQL Server and SQL Compact).
The reason for that is that EF requires the provider to supply metadata describing store types, built-in functions and primitive type mapping information - something that's not available through ODBC layer. There are also differences in SQL syntax supported by databases and the provider would have to compensate for those differences - again ODBC doesn't have enough information to do this in a general way.
If you want to target a specific database which has ODBC driver available, you can create EF-compatible provider by using the wrapping technique demonstrated in EF Sample Provider and EF Oracle Provider samples on MSDN Code Gallery.
