Using ADOX with ADO.NET

This article has been excerpted from book "A Programmer's Guide to ADO.NET in C#".

Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects Extensions for Data Definition Language and Security (ADOX) is an extension to ADO and provides an object model to manipulate data definition and security.

You can use ADOX in managed code in a pretty similar way to how you used an ADO recordset in the previous section. Just add a reference to ADOX type library using VS .NET's Add Reference option and use the namespace and its members as you would in unmanaged code.

To test this, create a new Windows application. After that add a reference to the Microsoft ADO Ext. 2-7 for DLL and Security component to the project (see Figure 10-27).

Figure 10-27: Adding a reference to ADOX library

Now of you add reference in your project, you'll see that ADOX namespace is listed (see Figure 10-28).

Figure 10-28: ADOX namespace listed in project reference

Now the only thing you need to do is to use the namespace and its members. The ADOX classes should be available in your application after adding using ADOX to the project. ADOX provides objects that you can use to create databases, tables, and columns. The Catalog object represent a database and its create method creates a new database. The table object represents a database table. You can add columns to a table using the Columns collection's Append method.

Listing 10-7 creates a new Microsoft Access database called Test.mdb with the table MyTable and two columns, col1 and col2, in it.

Listing 10-7. Using ADOX from managed code

private void Form1_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)

{

            // Create SQL and Connection strings

            string ConnectionString = @"Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0; DataSource=c:\Test.mdb";

            try

            {

                // Create a Catalog object

                Catalog ct = new Catalog();

                ct.Create(ConnectionString);

                // Create a table and two columns

                Table dt = new Table();

                dt.Name = "MyTable";

                dt.Columns.Append("col1", DataTypeEnum.adInteger, 4);

                dt.Columns.Append("col2", DataTypeEnum.adVarWChar, 255);

                //Add table to the tables collection

                ct.Table.Append((object)dt);

            }

            catch (Exception exp)

            {

                MessageBox.Show(exp.Message.ToString());

            }

}

Conclusion

Hope this article would have helped you in understanding using ADOX with ADO.NET. See other articles on the website also for further reference.

This essential guide to Microsoft's ADO.NET overviews C#, then leads you toward deeper understanding of ADO.NET.