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The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

© 2009 Mike Borozdin

The List of the LINQ to SQL and Entity Framework Providers

If you are using Microsoft SQL Server you don’t experience any problems, SQL Server are supported by both LINQ to SQL and the Entity Framework. Frankly speaking, it couldn’t be otherwise, since they all are made by Microsoft.

However, if you are using a non-Microsoft database engine, it’s certainly worth knowing if you can use LINQ to SQL or the Entity Framework with it. Moreover, it’s always better if there is native support.

  LINQ to SQL (native) LINQ to SQL (3rd party) Entity Framework (native) Entity Framework
(3rd party)
SQL Server Yes who cares? Yes who cares?
SQl Server CE Yes who cares? Yes who cares
Oracle No DBLinq
LINQ to Oracle
LightSpeed
dotConnect
Yes dotConnect
EFOracle
DB2 No ? Yes ?
MySQL No DBLinq
LightSpeed
Planned dotConnect
PostgreSQL No Npgsql
DBLinq

LightSpeed
dotConnect
No Npgsql
dotConnect

According to the table, the Entity Framework is natively supported by a greater number of databases than plain LINQ to SQL. Anyway, if you cannot find a native provider, you can always find a 3rd party one, but you must remember that some of them are not free and/or may lack some features.

Feel free to correct this table, if it contains a mistake and comment on individual providers. It’s reasonable to keep this list comprehensive. Although I wish every major database would have native support of both technologies.


Posted by Mike Borozdin on Tuesday, January 06, 2009 1:10 PM GMT
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