ADO.NET is a set of technologies that provides native access to data through Microsoft .NET.
Currently, you can use the PowerBuilder ADO.NET database interface to connect to the data source of SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and ODBC (for ODBC, IDE supports only ASE and SQL Anywhere). For the other databases, you can specify their ADO.NET data provider as the Custom Driver and PowerBuilder will try to load and parse the driver according to ADO's standard interfaces and common data types.
Before you define the interface and connect to a database using ADO.NET:
Step 1: Install and configure the data server
You must install and configure the database server and install the network software and client software.
To install and configure the database server, network, and client software:
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Make sure the appropriate database software is installed and running on its server.
You must obtain the database server software from your database vendor. For installation instructions, see your database vendor's documentation.
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Make sure the required network software (such as TCP/IP) is installed and running on your computer and is properly configured so that you can connect to the data server at your site. You must install the network communication driver that supports the network protocol and operating system platform you are using.
For installation and configuration instructions, see your network or data source administrator.
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If required, install the appropriate client software on each client computer on which PowerBuilder is installed.
Client software requirements
To determine client software requirements, see your database vendor's documentation.
Step 2: Install the ADO.NET interface
If you install PowerBuilder using the PowerBuilder Installer (an online setup program), the ADO.NET interface is automatically installed. If you install PowerBuilder using the downloaded installation package (an offline setup program), select the ADO .NET Database Driver from the list of components.
Step 3: Install the .NET data provider
To connect to a database using the PowerBuilder ADO.NET database interface, you must use an ADO.NET data provider.
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For SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and ODBC, the corresponding .NET data providers have been automatically included and installed with PowerBuilder.
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For Oracle, the corresponding .NET data provider is not included in PowerBuilder. You can manually download Oracle.ManagedDataAccess.Core.x.xx.xxx from the NuGet website or have PowerBuilder automatically download the driver from the NuGet website.
When you select Oracle from the Provider list in the Database Profile Setup -- ADO.NET DB dialog box, you will be prompted to have PowerBuilder automatically download and install the driver from www.nuget.org or manually download the driver from NuGet and then specify the location of driver on the development PC.
The driver downloaded from the NuGet website will be stored to %USERPROFILE%\.netdbdrives\; it will be automatically loaded when the database connection is created in the PowerBuilder IDE or when the file is packaged by the PowerBuilder Runtime Packager.
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For Custom Driver, you can provide the download URL of the NuGet package, and PowerBuilder automatically downloads and extracts the NuGet package, and then loads the driver; or you can download the ADO.NET data provider and PowerBuilder loads the driver from the local directory. For more information, refer to xxxx.
