The OLE DB Simple Provider Toolkit from Microsoft® offers a framework that simplifies the task of writing OLE DB providers over simple data and exposing this data to any OLE DB consumer (such as ActiveX® Data Objects, or any OLE DB-compliant application or control). The Toolkit is specially designed for quickly building OLE DB providers over simple data sources (for example, in-memory arrays), allowing developers to expose OLE DB interfaces without spending the time needed to build an entire OLE DB provider from scratch. The Toolkit is language neutral, supporting implementations in Microsoft® Visual Basic®, Microsoft® Visual C++®, or Microsoft® Visual J++™.
The OLE DB Simple Provider Toolkit employs several new Microsoft component technologies, including:
The general steps to building a Simple Provider involve writing your OSP data access code (OSP language reference is supplied with the Toolkit), implementing the data source object (which requests an OSP implementation), and registering the OLE DB Simple Provider DLL and OSP implementation DLL. For a more detailed description of these steps, see Building a Simple Provider: Step Summary.
Because the OLE DB Simple Provider Toolkit is designed to quickly build OLE DB providers over simple data, the providers built with this toolkit are less functional than a full OLE DB provider written in Visual C++. You may want to read about these limitations before using the Toolkit.