Many many LINQ Providers

DotNetInterop — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:28:00 GMT

When LINQ shipped, it included a provider model, to encourage people to make other systems and data stores accessible from the coolness-that-is-LINQ.

Back in February, Charlie Calvert published a long list of LINQ providers. In July, Robert Shelton later reblogged it. Charlie also has a list of LINQ Links. Nice to see. By my count there are 33 different LINQ providers listed. I'll bet there are more by now.

You can also search for more on LINQ providers.

ASP.NET Membership Providers

DotNetInterop — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:57:00 GMT

ASP.NET 2.0 includes membership services, which is a built-in mechanism for validating and storing user credentials, as well as storing and managing user profile information. ASP.NET Membership uses a service provider model to allow "any backing store" to act as the membership data store. Built-in to ASP.NET 2.0, Microsoft ships a SQL Server provider, as well as an ActiveDirectory (or ADAM) provider. What this means is, out of the box, you can manage members and logins of an ASP.NET web site using those backing stores.

What if you have something different? The service provider model enables other third-party implementations. Microsoft hoped this would encourage people to just go build what they want, and in fact, that has happened.

Here are some resources on third party ASP.NET membership providers:

XML provider - article and source on MSDN. Very lightweight, read-only.

Writing a custom provider - article on devx, employs MS Access

Writing a custom provider - KB Article from microsoft.

MySQL Provider - article and source code on codeproject.com
PetShop4 - including source for a partial Oracle 10g membership provider
PostgreSQL provider - from CoreLab (trial version available )
db4o provider - sourceforge project
SQLite Provider - article and source code on eggheadcafe

With all those resources, it's clear the extensibility model works. Well, you need a custom provider, go get it. You want to write your own? Get to it.

You can also look for more providers.

All About Interop : Providers

Many many LINQ Providers

ASP.NET Membership Providers