What is the alternative to OleDB data providers?

Question

I have to import data from a variety of sources: text delimited with comma, tab, custom delimiter, Excel files, SQL Server and Oracle. The logical choice seemed to be an OleDB Connection, that would allow me treat any input as a DataSet and have very few implementation differences to worry about.

Problem is that good ol' "Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0" becomes obsolete.

What is the alternative to it?

Answer 1

There's no alternative provider framework that I know of, just different sets of APIs that provide more granularity with most of the sources OleDb caters for, minus things like WMI (which isn't actually supported anymore anyway) and Windows Search:

• Lumenworks CSV parser (works with any delimiter)
• Excel DataReader
• Various ORMs instead of providers, though for data export/input OleDB is still easier

Answer 2

Why do you think Jet is becoming obsolete?

I consulted product team. The document which you found gives a misleading impression. Jet 4.0 is installed with Windows 2000 and later, including Vista, so it will follow the lifetime of the OS through 2017 or so and even longer if it ships with Longhorn. Therefore, this components has been removed from Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) (2.6 and latter).

We need not to worry about this technology becomes obsolete.

Hope this helps, please don't hesitate to let me know if you have any more concern. We are glad to assist you.

Have a great day, Best regards,

Wen Yuan Microsoft Online Community Support

-- http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.data.odbc&tid=e01c1f67-3003-48b3-8ba3-2b846c192ca1&cat=&lang=&cr=&sloc=&p=1

The document refered to is: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/271908