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Rapidly create and deploy powerful .NET applications that integrate with xBase-compatible database engines (.dbf, .ndx, .ntx, .dbt, etc) like FoxPro, Clipper, etc..

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LINQ to xBase Data


LINQ offers versatile querying capabilities within the .NET Framework (v3.0+), offering a straightforward method for programmatic data access through CData ADO.NET Data Providers. In this article, we demonstrate the use of LINQ to retrieve information from the xBase Data Provider.

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the xBase via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for xBase. To achieve this, we will use LINQ to Entity Framework, which facilitates the generation of connections and can be seamlessly employed with any CData ADO.NET Data Providers to access data through LINQ.

See the help documentation for a guide to setting up an EF 6 project to use the provider.

  1. In a new project in Visual Studio, right-click on the project and choose to add a new item. Add an ADO.NET Entity Data Model.
  2. Choose EF Designer from Database and click Next.
  3. Add a new Data Connection, and change your data source type to "CData xBase Data Source".

  4. Enter your data source connection information.

    The DataSource property must be set to the name of the folder that contains the .dbf files. Specify the IncludeFiles property to work with xBase table files having extensions that differ from .dbf. Specify multiple extensions in a comma-separated list.

    Below is a typical connection string:

    DataSource=MyDBFFilesFolder;
  5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting xBaseEntities as our entity connection in App.Config.
  6. Enter a model name and select any tables or views you would like to include in the model.

Using the entity you created, you can now perform select commands. For example:

xBaseEntities context = new xBaseEntities(); var invoicesQuery = from invoices in context.Invoices select invoices; foreach (var result in invoicesQuery) { Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.Company); }

See "LINQ and Entity Framework" chapter in the help documentation for example queries of the supported LINQ.