DDEX Providers

A data designer extensibility provider (DDEX provider) is an implementation of the DDEX support entities, including XML files for describing the data object hierarchy and their views, Visual Studio command table (.vsct) files, and registry entries.

A DDEX provider implementation enables programmatic access to external data source objects; this allows the data source objects to be exposed in the Visual Studio Server Explorer and to be used on a Visual Studio designer.

Note

While some similarities exist between a DDEX provider and .NET Framework Data Providers, a DDEX provider is distinctly different and unique.

A DDEX provider can build upon an underlying technology, such as ADO.NET or OLE DB; alternatively, it can expose a unique data source, such as a text file, an XML file, or any data container whose underlying data structure can be described using XML.

While Visual Studio provides several such extensibility providers "in the box" (see table below), the DDEX SDK provides the managed API and other files with which you can implement your own custom DDEX provider.

DDEX providers included with Visual Studio

Visual Studio ships with DDEX providers that support the following data sources using the specified ADO.NET providers:

Data Source	Data Providers
Microsoft SQL Server	.NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server .NET Framework Data Provider for OLEDB
Microsoft SQL Server Database File	.NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server
Microsoft Access Database File	.NET Framework Data Provider for OLEDB
Oracle Database	.NET Framework Data Provider for Oracle .NET Framework Data Provider for OLEDB
Microsoft ODBC Data Source	.NET Framework Data Provider for ODBC
Microsoft SQL Server Mobile Edition	.NET Framework Data Provider for SQL Server Mobile Edition
<others>	All data providers

See Also

Concepts

Data Designer Extensibility Architecture