Contents • • • • • • Install Firebird Client Library The first step in this process is to install the Firebird.NET Client Library, which can be downloaded from the. Download the client library and install it in its default location. Add the Providers to the Registry Now download the DDEX Provider and.NET Data Provider installers from the, you can find the DDEX installer at the bottom of the page. Run the installers, installing the providers in the C: Program Files FirebirdClient directory.

Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010/2012/2013/2015 DDEX Provider for Firebird. You can use gacutil utility to do this or to check whether it's correctly installed.

Once these are installed you need to edit the FirebirdDDEXProviderPackageLess32.reg or FirebirdDDEXProviderPackageLess64.reg if you are running a 64 bit operating system. Locate the%path% marker and replace it with the install path of the providers. With the default install you should end up with the following. Warning: Make sure you use as the path separators, e.g.

C: Program Files FirebirdClient Update the machine.config The next step involves the modification of your machine.config. You can locate this file in either C: WINDOWS Microsoft.NET Framework v2.0.50727 CONFIG machine.config or C: WINDOWS Microsoft.NET Framework64 v2.0.50727 CONFIG machine.config on 64-bit systems. Open the file with any text editor, it contains XML configuration details used to configure.NET applications running on this machine. Before we edit this file we need to determine some information about the.NET providers that are supplied with the.NET data provider.

Open a.NET 2.0 SDK Command Prompt at the prompt enter. Microsoft (R).NET Global Assembly Cache Utility. Version 2.0.50727.42 Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Global Assembly Cache contains the following assemblies: FirebirdSQL.data.FirebirdClient, Version=2.0.1.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=3750abcc3150b00c, processorArchitecture=MSIL With this information you can now add the following two lines into the machine.config. Note the use of the version, culture, and public key token in the second line.

Use the details that you get from running the gacutil instruction if they differ from the details shown here. Installing the Embedded Driver At this stage the required changes have been made for Visual Studio to present its designers, allowing you to configure connections, data adapters, data sources, and table adapters etc. If you are using an embedded database you will also need to install the database drivers so that Visual Studio can load these to interact with your databases.

Download the embedded driver from the. Extract the DLL files into your system32 directory within the windows directory (i.e. C: Windows System32). With these files installed here Visual Studio will be able to load the database to extract the schema information that it requires to automate the code generation. Inside Visual Studio If you run Visual Studio now you should be able to do the following: • Add a new Data Connection in the Server Explorer • Add Data Sources to your projects • etc.

Getting Started (DDEX) • • 2 minutes to read In this article The Data Designer Extensibility (DDEX) SDK provides documentation, samples, and resources to help you implement a DDEX provider for exposing third-party data source objects in Visual Studio. DDEX providers allow you to expose objects from virtually any data source. What Is DDEX? DDEX enhances the Visual Studio design-time experience by allowing data designers to communicate with third-party data sources and their object hierarchies. At its highest level, DDEX defines a systematic approach to extending data designers and data-related features of Visual Studio. More practically, this involves two architectural pillars: • DDEX consumes a set of common support entities that are extended by specialized data providers that are called DDEX providers. These support entities are managed classes that support such things as data-command handling, object enumeration, data-connection support, data-object support, view support, and numerous other important capabilities.