Hi
I've written my own data provider and want to be able to deploy it so that
it becomes available generally on the machine. Ideally to be able to add a
data connection in visual studio's Server Explorer.
I haven't been able to find anything meaningful on the web thus far to
detail what it is you need to configure to be able to do this, and was
wondering if anyone knew how to achieve this?

TIA
-aj

There's lots of stuff on the web that discusses this.  Look up DDEX (Data
Designer Extensibility).  Adding your provider to the Server Explorer only
works in VS2005 and you'll have a lot of work ahead of you to implement it.
Your provider needs to implement GetSchema() on the connection object, and
will have to provide a lot of information in them to do the thing properly.

In order to make a data provider generally available on the entire machine,
your provider needs to implement a DbProviderFactory, must be registered in
the GAC, and an entry must be made in the
Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\config\machine.config

You'll find the entry in the XML file under:
<configuration>
  <system.data>
    <DbProviderFactories>

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