Summary

In the previous chapter, you saw how to access various forms of data using a standardized model outlined for you by the ADO.NET data providers for SQL, Oracle, OLE DB, and so on. This chapter showed the reasons why you might create your own provider, and gave you information on how to create a provider and the interfaces that are required for data providers. Finally, you saw the code for a sample, custom data provider that gets its data from a web service connection instead of from a standard data source. After finishing this chapter, you should have a good idea of when and when not to create custom data providers. And if you decide you need to create a data provider, you should now have the information and the tools necessary to do so.