The Professional Edition of dotConnect Universal includes bundled data providers for Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL database servers. This article provides technical details that may be required when using the bundled data providers

• Overview
• Switching to Standalone Installation
• Licensing
• Deployment

Overview

dotConnect Universal Professional Edition is a powerful solution for creating ADO.NET multi-database applications. Besides other advantages, the Professional Edition includes run-time assemblies of other Devart ADO.NET data providers: dotConnect for Oracle, dotConnect for MySQL, and dotConnect for PostgreSQL. These providers, together with standard SQL client, ODBC, and OLE DB, allow to access virtually any database from your application.

For useful information on the bundled data providers please refer to topics Using dotConnect Universal with dotConnect for Oracle, Using dotConnect Universal with dotConnect for MySQL, Using dotConnect Universal with dotConnect for PostgreSQL. You can find there typical connection strings, quick start steps, type map and brief description of special features. This article spotlights the issues common to all providers.

Switching to Standalone Installation

When dotConnect for Oracle, dotConnect for MySQL, or dotConnect for PostgreSQL are used as underlying data providers, dotConnect Universal references assemblies Devart.Data.Universal.Oracle.dll, Devart.Data.Universal.MySql.dll, or Devart.Data.Universal.PostgreSql.dll from Global Assembly Cache (GAC). Upon installation dotConnect Universal registers in the GAC assemblies from the \Program Files\Devart\dotConnect\Universal\Providers folder. These assemblies are the bundled data providers, so dotConnect Universal uses the bundled providers by default.

If for some reasons you need to use standalone data providers (dotConnect for Oracle, dotConnect for MySQL, or dotConnect for PostgreSQL as separate installations), you should replace one or all of these assemblies with corresponding files from the ..\Providers\External folder. This folder contains "proxy" assemblies (drivers for the providers) that point to the standalone providers. For example, to make dotConnect Universal work with the standalone installation of dotConnect for MySQL, perform the following steps:

1. Close all running Visual Studio instances.
2. Close all applications that use dotConnect Universal or dotConnect for MySQL.
3. Register the assembly in the GAC with the following command:

   gacutil /i %Program Files%\Devart\dotConnect\Universal\Providers\External\Devart.Data.Universal.MySql.dll

   Here %Program Files%\Devart\dotConnect\Universal is the directory where you installed dotConnect Universal.

If you wish to continue using the bundled provider, issue the following command:

gacutil /i %Program Files%\Devart\dotConnect\Universal\Providers\Devart.Data.Universal.MySql.dll

Licensing

When using the bundled providers, license information is required for dotConnect Universal only. The standalone providers require licensing together with dotConnect Universal. For more information refer to the Licensing topic.

Deployment

To deploy applications written with dotConnect Universal, copy some run-time assemblies to target machine. The assemblies can be registered at the GAC for the appropriate .NET Framework or placed in the folder of your application.

• Deploy the Devart.Data.Universal.dll assembly.
• For bundled providers, deploy the provider drivers for the servers you use from the \Program Files\dotConnect\Universal\Providers\ folder.
• For standalone providers, deploy the provider drivers for the servers you use from the \Program Files\dotConnect\Universal\Providers\External folder. Also deploy the assemblies of the actual data providers (refer to proper documentaion for details).

See Also

Using dotConnect Universal with dotConnect for Oracle  | Using dotConnect Universal with dotConnect for MySQL  | Using dotConnect Universal with dotConnect for PostgreSQL  | Licensing  | Deployment