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ProviderBase Class

Provides a base implementation for the extensible provider model.

Namespace:  System.Configuration.Provider
Assembly:  System.Configuration (in System.Configuration.dll)

public abstract class ProviderBase

The ProviderBase type exposes the following members.

Protected methodProviderBaseInitializes a new instance of the ProviderBase class.

Public propertyDescriptionGets a brief, friendly description suitable for display in administrative tools or other user interfaces (UIs).

Public methodInitializeInitializes the provider.

The provider model is intended to encapsulate all or part of the functionality of multiple ASP.NET features, such as membership, profiles, and protected configuration. It allows the developer to create supporting classes that provide multiple implementations of the encapsulated functionality. In addition, developers can write new features using the provider model. This can be an effective way to support multiple implementations of a feature's functionality without duplicating the feature code or recoding the application layer if the implementation method needs to be changed.

The ProviderBase class is simple, containing only a few basic methods and properties that are common to all providers. Feature-specific providers (such as MembershipProvider) inherit from ProviderBase and establish the necessary methods and properties that the implementation-specific providers for that feature must support. Implementation-specific providers (such as SqlMembershipProvider) inherit in turn from a feature-specific provider (in this case, MembershipProvider).

The most important aspect of the provider model is that the implementation (for example, whether data is persisted as a text file or in a database) is abstracted from the application code. The type of the implementation-specific provider for the given feature is designated in a configuration file. The feature-level provider then reads in the type from the configuration file and acts as a factory to the feature code. The application developer can then use the feature classes in the application code. The implementation type can be swapped out in the configuration file, eliminating the need to rewrite the code to accommodate the different implementation methodology.

The providers included with ASP.NET are mostly abstractions of data persistence implementations for features like profiles or membership. However, this model can be applied to any other kind of feature functionality that could be abstracted and implemented in multiple ways.

How to: Sample Role-Provider ImplementationBuilding ASP .NET Web Applications

For an example of how to use the ProviderBase class, see Profile Provider Implementation Example.

.NET Framework


.NET Framework Client Profile

Supported in: 4, 3.5 SP1



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