.NET with InterSystems Overview

See the Table of Contents for a detailed listing of the subjects covered in this document.

InterSystems IRIS® provides a wide variety of robust .NET connectivity options, including lightweight SDKs that provide database access via .NET ADO, .NET objects, or InterSystems multidimensional storage, and gateways that give InterSystems IRIS server applications direct access to .NET applications and external databases.

This document describes how to use the IRISClient .NET assembly, which provides two different but complementary ways to access InterSystems databases from a .NET application:

• The ADO.NET Managed Provider — is InterSystems implementation of the ADO.NET data access interface. It provides easy relational access to data using the standard ADO.NET Managed Provider classes (see “Using ADO.NET Managed Provider Classes”).

• The Entity Framework Provider — is the InterSystems implementation of the object-relational mapping (ORM) framework for ADO.NET. It enables .NET developers to work with relational data using domain-specific objects (see “Using the Entity Framework Provider”).

The IRISClient assembly is implemented using .NET managed code throughout, making it easy to deploy within a .NET environment. It is thread-safe and can be used within multithreaded .NET applications.

This document covers the following topics:

• Connecting to the InterSystems Database provides detailed information about database connections (including connection pooling).

• Configuration and Requirements provides information on setup and configuration for all InterSystems .NET solutions.

• Using the ADO.NET Managed Provider gives concrete examples using the InterSystems implementation of the ADO.NET Managed Provider API.

• Using the Entity Framework Provider describes how to set up and get started using the InterSystems implementation of Entity Framework Provider.

• Quick Reference for the .NET Managed Provider — lists and describes all methods and properties discussed in these topics.

The following documents contain detailed information on other .NET solutions provided by InterSystems IRIS:

• Using the Native SDK for .NET describes how to use the .NET Native SDK to access resources formerly available only through ObjectScript.

• Persisting .NET Objects with InterSystems XEP describes how to use the Event Persistence SDK (XEP) for rapid .NET object persistence.

• Using the InterSystems ODBC Driver describes how to use the ODBC driver to access InterSystems databases from external applications or to access external ODBC data sources from InterSystems products.