Interbase ADO.NET Driver Update Enhances Visual Studio Support
Embarcadero has released an update to the new InterBase ADO.NET driver for Visual Studio published in May of 2021 that introduces support for InterBase’s award-winning ChangeViews™ feature.
The ADO.NET driver has both 32 and 64 bit support for InterBase and integration with DDEX and Entity Framework 6, giving you full customization and control over your development with InterBase and Visual Studio.
The updated driver, made available as a Nuget package and listed in the Visual Studio marketplace, will offer Visual Studio 2022 IDE integration and full support for ADO.NET and the Entity Framework.
What is ChangeViews™?
Change Views™ is an IoTA-award winning data synchronization feature of InterBase. Change Views™ improves data security and eases data management workload by answering the question “what data has changed since I last viewed it?“
Change Views™ uses the multigenerational architecture of Interbase to capture changes to data. With Change Views™ there is no performance overhead on existing transactions because it maintains a consistent view of changed data observable by other transactions.
The NuGet packages and the driver include:
- Core ADO.NET framework support and integration, including both InterBase server and the local, embedded IBLite/IBToGo (see image below)
- Entity Framework support, offering the ability to use the popular .NET Object-Relational mapping layer with InterBase (this support requires adding a specific InterBase UDF extension library to your database installation)
- Visual Studio DDEX integration, with the ability to navigate the database connection and the actual data within the Visual Studio IDE (see image below)
The InterBase NuGet Package
The NuGet package for Visual Studio includes the updated ADO.NET driver for InterBase, and additional features for seamless integration with the Visual Studio IDE and the .NET platform overall.
The features are available in two separate NuGet packages here:
The ADO.NET driver and all support code is available also as open source on GitHub at https://github.com/Embarcadero/IB.NETDataProvider.
For more information on the InterBase ADO.NET driver and its capabilities, please visit the InterBase docwiki at http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/InterBase/2020/en/ADO.NET_Driver. We are also providing documentation and demos with the NuGet package itself.
The replay of the webinar around the launch of the original new ADO.NET driver in May 2021 is available here:
Introducing InterBase’s New ADO NET driver
For a deeper look at InterBase’s ChangeViews feature, read Fernando Rizzatto’s related blog post: “.NET Apps And Interbase Change Views – How to Track Data Changes Automatically”
Other InterBase Connectivity Options
Besides the new ADO.NET driver for Visual Studio, InterBase also offers great connectivity and integrated drivers for Embarcadero RAD Studio (via FireDAC and IBX). InterBase has expanded its role in relation with RAD Studio to include cross platform support for a single database file format working across Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. Additionally, InterBase includes a JDBC driver for Java applications and an ODBC driver for most other development environments and programming languages.
Learn More About InterBase
InterBase is an ultrafast, scalable, embeddable SQL database with commercial-grade data security, disaster recovery, and change synchronization. With a long history as a powerful and reliable database system, InterBase has a very small footprint and can be deployed in a server but even embedded in a mobile application. For more information please visit https://www.interbase.com