This article has been excerpted from the book "A Programmer's Guide to ADO.NET in C#".
As you can see, working with different data sources means nothing except changing the connection string. Listing 5-27 shows the connection string for the MySQL database. You access a MySQL database through odbc data providers. (I'll discuss My SQL database connectivity and show how to install an ODBC driver for MySQL with a step-by-step example later article). As you can see from Listing 5-27, you can use a similar database as Northwind. To provide a similar sample, I exported the Access 2000 Northwind database as a MySQL database. You can use any database. Just replace the database name and change the SQL statement. To test this application, create a Windows application, drop a data grid to the form, add a reference to the System.Data and Microsoft.Data.Odbc namespaces, and type the following code in Listing 5-27 on the Form_load event.
Listing 5-27. Reading data from a MySQL database using ODBC
  1. private void Form1 _Load(object sender, System. EvetArgs e)
  2. {
  3. string ConnectionString = "Driver={MySQL};SERVER = localhost; " + "DATABASE= NorthwindMySQL; ";
  4. OdbcConnection conn = new OdbcConnection(ConnectionString);
  5. conn.Open();
  6. OdbcDataAdapter da = new OdbcDataAdapter
  7. ("SELECT CustomerID, ContactName, ContactTitle FROM Customers", conn);
  8. DataSet ds = new DataSet("cust");
  9. da.Fill(ds, "Customers");
  10. dataGrid1.DataSource = ds.DefaultViewManager;
  11. conn.Close();
  12. }

Conclusion

Hope this article would have helped you in understanding Connecting to a MySQL Database in ADO.NET. See my other articles on the website on ADO.NET.
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