Creating component to access multiple databases

Question

Hi,

I need to create a data access library to access data from multiple databases like SQL, Oracle.

The Library should work equally with all databases. In .NET i guess ODBC will help me in doing this. But do I need to think about any other alternatives? And if I finalize ODBC what special precautions I need to take ?

Answer 1

Check out The ADO.NET Entity Framework

Answer 2

Do you need to create one from scratch?

Have a look at the Enterprise Library on Codeplex.

You could use ODBC but that will limit you to Microsoft machines.

Some of the biggest issues to solve are how the different database types handle the same data (such as a c# string being a varchar in some, some don't have boolean or unsigned types ) and also how they are initialised.