Progress Upgrades DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET 
Progress Software is shipping DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET 3.5, a new option for architects and devs looking to improve performance and usability for Microsoft Entity Framework 4.0 to applications using Oracle, Sybase ASE and DB2.
Progress Software is shipping DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET 3.5, a new option for architects and devs looking to improve performance and usability for Microsoft Entity Framework 4.0 to applications using Oracle, Sybase ASE and DB2.
With DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET 3.5, Progress extends benefits of its 100 percent managed code architecture, according to Progress’ Rob Steward, vice president of engineering.
Other key features of DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET 3.5 include:
- Seamless support for WC/F, RIA and Silverlight EF deployments
- Superior EDM model generation and runtime performance to all Entity Framework applications
- Optimized connection pooling for increased performance and resource efficiency
- Support for Visual Studio 2010, the .NET 4.0 runtime, and version 5.0 of the Enterprise Library, including pluggable support for the Data Access Application Block (DAAB) Logging Application Block (LAB).
- Support for versions 4.0 and 1.0 of the ADO.NET Entity Framework to Oracle, Sybase and DB2 on iSeries
With DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET 3.5, Progress “allows developers and architects who need to connect Entity Framework to have a superior option for better overall performance and increased usability.” Steward said in a statement.
Inside Microsoft’s ADO.NET Entity Framework
ADO.NET Entity Framework is an object-oriented mapping (ORM) framework for .NET Framework comprised of set of data-access APIs for the Microsoft .NET Framework. It was included with .NET Framework 4.0 Service Pack 1 and Visual Studio 2010, released in January 2010.
In the Entity Framework, and “entity” is an object which has a key representing the primary key of a logical datastore entity. A conceptual Entity Data Model (Entity-relationship model) is mapped to a datastore schema model. Using the Entity Data Model, the Entity Framework allows data to be treated as entities independently of their underlying datastore representations.
