MySQL and .NET

[Tim Mulholland]

My company is considering scaling up a database application that previously
used Microsoft Access. The database has about 25-30 tables in it. The amount
of daily transactions to the database is fairly small for that number of
tables, but is growing.

The web application that uses this database is written in ASP.NET/C#. Our
hosting provider has MySQL available on the servers, so that seems like the
logical choice to use.

I have heard however, that there are some problems in connecting to a MySQL
database from .NET. I tried to dig up some of the things i heard about it,
but i couldn't find any. I do however see alot of potential ways to connect
between the two (the mysql website lists many: MyODBC, dbProvider,
MySQLNetProvider, MyOLEDB, MySQLDriverCS, and the one from ByteFX to name a
few).

Are there problems with connecting between the two? Or am i just imagining
that i read that somewhere? Whats the best way to connect between the two?
Use the native ODBC provider? Or use one of the many listed on MySQL's site?

Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks in advance,

Tim

 

[Kevin Yu [MSFT]]

Hi Tim,

Thank you for posting in the community!

First of all, I would like to confirm my understanding of your issue. From
your description, I understand that you need to know which data provider to
use to connect to a MySQL database in .NET. If there is any
misunderstanding, please feel free to let me know.

In my opinion, it is recommended to use the official drivers. The official
MySQL website only provides ODBC drivers. It can be downloaded here:

http://www.mysql.com/downloads/index.html

However, some third party companies has developed OleDb providers and .NET
data providers for MySQL. Since you are developing on a .NET application,
you can also try to use an .NET data provider. It might be optimized for
MySQL. Here is the link for one of them:

http://crlab.com/mysqlnet/

HTH. If anything is unclear, please feel free to reply to the post.

Kevin Yu
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