evelopers constantly face problems brought on by changing
technologies. When Microsoft releases a new version of a data
provider, or a customer decides to switch databases from Oracle
to SQL Server, you may have to rework code you've already
written. But you can avoid much of this rework if you take the
time to plan and code for such changes. One recommended way to
do this is to develop components that take advantage of the
Provider Model is a class or a component that provides specific
functionality to an application. However, the Provider class
used will not be known until run time. In this article, you will
see how to create a data provider that lets you change from
using SQL Server to a generic OLE DB provider with no code
changes! You will just have to change a setting in a
configuration file. Using the Provider Model gives you a great
amount of flexibility and upgradeability to your source code.
Microsoft provides a set of Provider Model Templates that you
can download from MSDN . The difference between