LINQ to DB2 Data

This article illustrates using LINQ to access tables within the DB2 via the CData ADO.NET Data Provider for DB2. 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 DB2 Data Source".

4. Enter your data source connection information.

   Set the following properties to connect to DB2:

   • Server: Set this to the name of the server running DB2.
   • Port: Set this to the port the DB2 server is listening on.
   • Database: Set this to the name of the DB2 database.
   • User: Set this to the username of a user allowed to access the database.
   • Password: Set this to the password of a user allowed to access the database.

   You will also need to install the corresponding DB2 driver:

   • Windows: Install the IBM Data Server Provider for .NET.

     On Windows, installing the IBM Data Server Provider is sufficient, as the installation registers it in the machine.config.

   • Java: Install the IBM Data Server Driver for JDBC.

     In the Java version, place the IBM Data Server Driver JAR in the www\WEB-INF\lib\ folder for this application.

   Below is a typical connection string:

   Server=10.0.1.2;Port=50000;User=admin;Password=admin;Database=test;

👁 Required connection properties for the data source. (QuickBooks is shown.)

5. If saving your entity connection to App.Config, set an entity name. In this example we are setting DB2Entities 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 , update, delete, and insert commands. For example:

DB2Entities context = new DB2Entities();

var ordersQuery = from orders in context.Orders
 select orders;

foreach (var result in ordersQuery) {
 Console.WriteLine("{0} {1} ", result.Id, result.OrderName);
}

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