Dynamic LINQ with other databases

Question

Are there any free (gratis) providers for databases other MS SQL (e.g. MySQL or SQLite) that work with LINQ and support dynamic SQL query generation? E.g. table.Count() generates something like SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table and doesn't first load the whole table and then count the rows.

Answer 1

Here is the DBLinq project: http://code.google.com/p/dblinq2007/

DbLinq is THE LINQ provider that allows to use common databases with an API close to Linq to SQL. It currently supports (by order of appearance): MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Ingres, Firebird

Whether these providers execute Count() in the way you describe depends on the quality of the provider, I suppose. Presumably some effort is made at optimization.

See also http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/01/07/dynamic-linq-part-1-using-the-linq-dynamic-query-library.aspx

Answer 2

NHibernate supports multiple databases and has a recently-released Linq provider.

Answer 3

Check out ADO.NET Entity Framework. It supports MySQL via ADO.NET data providers and LINQ to Entities (similar to LINQ to SQL). Being a Microsoft tool, it has good Visual Studio integration and support.

Can you also explain why you want to support these databases?