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I'm trying to create an MVC application that uses an Access 2007 DB (.accdb). I can create the Model using DataSet. But if I try to create a Model using EntityFramework, I can't get past VS2008 wanting to make the connection string be a SQL server. Am I missing something, or does EF not play with Access?

John Farrell
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Dale
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1 Answers1

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The Entity Framework works only with ADO.NET providers that support it. To use your Access database, I assume you use the OleDB provider, which doesn't support EF. Microsoft provides only two ADO.NET providers that support EF : SQL Server, and SQL Server CE. However you can find third party providers for other DBMS :

There are probably many others, but as far as I know, nothing for Access (which IMHO in not much of a DBMS anyway...)

Thomas Levesque
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    There was really no need for that last parenthetical. Why don't you edit that out of your answer, which was otherwise ust fine? – David-W-Fenton Feb 09 '10 at 22:08
  • If what you say is true, what about using SQL Server and a linked server to get to Access/Jet/ACE? Then you could go through SQL Server and get to the Jet/ACE data as though it were SQL Server data, no? – David-W-Fenton Feb 09 '10 at 22:09
  • perhaps... to be honest, I'm not even sure what you're talking about... do you mean that you can query another database through SQL Server, similarly to Oracle's DB links ? – Thomas Levesque Feb 10 '10 at 01:41
  • SQL Server allows you do mount other SQL Servers and Jet/ACE databases as "linked servers" and then you can use them from your SQL Server database. It's kind of like Access linked tables. I would assume that's what Oracle provides, too, but I know nothing about Oracle (none of my clients are foolish enough to use such an expensive database). – David-W-Fenton Feb 11 '10 at 04:13
  • OK... so it might be an option indeed – Thomas Levesque Feb 11 '10 at 09:41