ADO.NET Data provider for Firebird in Visual Studio 2015

Question

I am struggling creating a Firebird connection in Visual Studio 2015. I have a C# class library with which I would like to connect to a Firebird database. I installed these plugins from NuGet:

But when I try to add a new Item "ADO.NET Entity Data Model" with "EF Designer from database", the Firebird connection is not listed:

Reading articles on the internet showed that an entry in machine.config should have been made. But this didn't happen. There is no Firebird entry in that config file.

The "FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient" reference exists in the Visual Studio project.

The entry in the App.config file is:

<DbProviderFactories>
      <remove invariant="FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient" />
      <add name="FirebirdClient Data Provider" invariant="FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient" description=".NET Framework Data Provider for Firebird" type="FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient.FirebirdClientFactory, FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient" />
</DbProviderFactories>

I as well installed the SQLite plugins just to see if this provider behaves the same. And indeed it wasn't listed either in the "Choose Data Source" dialog. I guess I make a general mistake.

Can anybody help me with this issue? How can I create a database connection to my Firebird database?

Answer 1

If you install the driver via NuGet, it is only available in your project, you can't use it from Visual Studio itself, as the NuGet package doesn't install itself on your machine (and so doesn't modify the machine.config).

You will need to install the driver and the DDEX provider (version 3.0.2 or higher) with the installers you can download from Firebird ADO.NET Data Provider downloads.