Insulate Your Code With the Provider Model

Developers constantly face problems brought on by changing technologies. When Microsoft releases a new version of a data provider, or a customer decides to switch databases from Oracle to SQL Server, one may have to rework code they have already written. But one can avoid much of this rework if one takes the time to plan and code for such changes. One recommended way to do this is to develop components that take advantage of the Provider Model. A provider is a class or a component that provides specific functionality to an application. However, the Provider class used will not be known until run time.