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I'm an asp.net developer, developing in Visual Studio 2008 Professional. I've just completed phase one of a project, an online reservations system for a small airline. This system is intended primarily for data collection and online payment.

My customer uses ClientBase, a desktop system developed for the industry which uses Interbase. ClientBase is to remain the central administration application for my customer.

Phase two of the project is to integrate the web application with ClientBase. My plan is to develop a small desktop application in VB using SQL Server Express to handle communications with the web application on the one hand, and to integrate the incoming data with ClientBase on the other. To do this, I need to be able to communicate with Interbase.

I need to be able to do the basic CRUD operations of course, but I also need to be able to see the existing database structures. I need to be able to follow the changes that take place when test reservations and inventory are entered into ClientBase so that I can properly integrate the data collected on the web.

I'm looking at UniDirect.net to provide the functionality I need with Interbase. I'm confused though, the professional version says it includes bundled data providers for Oracle, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. What about Interbase?

Does anyone have any thoughts, ideas, pros, or cons regarding using UniDirect.net for my project?

Diane

UniDirect .NET does not include neither MS SQL Server provider (SqlClient) nor Interbase provider (FirebirdClient ADO.NET 2.0 Data provider for .NET and Mono). You can install the mentioned database providers separately. They are supported by our provider. UniDirect .NET is an additional data access layer in your application. The main feature of UniDirect .NET is access to multiple database servers in one code. With UniDirect .NET it is possible to avoid writing conditional code for different providers or using ADO.NET interfaces directly.
For example, please refer to our online documentation, the Using dotConnect Universal section, the UniSQL article.

UniDirect .NET implements full support of design-time development and integration with Visual Studio 2005. Full design-time support for Visual Studio 2008 is not implemented yet (e.g., the user needs to add the components to the toolbox manually, the Tools | UniDirect menu is not available). So UniDirect .NET has only run-time support for Visual Studio 2008, design-time support will be implemented in the nearest future.