CData .NET FAQs, Community Resources, & Troubleshooting

Frequently Asked Questions

  • What versions of .NET do CData ADO.NET Providers support?

    CData ships assemblies for .NET 4.x, .NET Standard 2.0 and .NET 8.0

  • What versions of Microsoft Visual Studio are supported?

    CData ADO.NET Providers support Visual Studio versions 2012 and above

  • What versions of Entity Framework do CData ADO.NET Providers support?

    Entity Framework 6, Entity Framework Core 8.0

  • What operating systems do CData ADO.NET Providers support?

    CData ADO.NET Providers ship with multiple assemblies

    • .NET Framework 4 assemblies run on Windows environments with x64 processors
    • .NET Standard 2 and .NET 8 assemblies run on Windows, Linux, and Mac environments with both x64 and ARM64 processors

  • What are the distribution or licensing options with CData ADO.NET Providers?

    The Community License allows you to install the Provider on one (1) desktop or workstation for personal use, development, or testing.

    A Per-Developer license allows you to install and internally use the Provider on any number of desktops or workstations with options for royalty-free distribution within your organization.

Community resources

Visit the Developer Community to browse ADO.NET articles and ADO.NET questions, ask your own question, or start a conversation!

Common errors & troubleshooting

  • I'm seeing the error message: 'An item with the same key has already been added'

    This error can occur when running the model builder, and it typically indicates that there is a duplicate column name. To resolve this, you will need to remove the duplicate before running the model builder again.

  • The Provider is not showing in the Server Explorer or model builder's data source dropdown

    This can occur if there was an issue with installing the driver's Visual Studio extension. To remedy this, please close Visual Studio, as it must be closed for the installation to succeed. Then, please go to the lib subfolder of your installation directory and double click the .vsix file that matches your version of Visual Studio (so if you’re using Visual Studio 2022, you would click System.Data.CData.Provider.2022.vsix). Upon reopening Visual Studio, the provider should appear.

  • The assembly for an older version is being cached

    Visual Studio will sometimes cache old assemblies, so for instance, if you’re using v22 and upgrade to v23, when you add references to the v23 assemblies, it will change them to v22 assemblies. This can happen even after you’ve deleted the old version and cleaned/rebuilt the project. There are a few potential solutions for fixing this, such as right clicking the assembly, going to Properties, and looking at the Path that is listed. Deleting the old assembly listed in that path can resolve this issue, and the links below provide other potential solutions to this.

    Alternatively, you can create a new project with the correct reference and move your code to the new project.

Free Community Licenses for data developers

CData ADO.NET Providers further enhance the capabilities of Entity Framework by offering consistent connectivity to more than 270 data sources beyond traditional databases, including SaaS, NoSQL, and big data systems.

With the CData ADO.NET Community License, you get free-forever libraries to access your data in personal .NET projects, all through familiar SQL. Request a license and start building data apps today!