Re: IBM ADO.net data provider version compatibility

Dave,

Tell your programmers not to use the GAC -- or more accurately not to use it for the client access reference. The GAC is cool in many way, and it allows you to have multiple versions of a single DLL in a common location on your machine. HOWEVER, to use a GAC dll you need to refer to it using its strong name, and the strong name includes the version number. Basically you're saying "I know I run against version 1.23, so always give me version 1.23, I don't care if there's also a version 1.24, or 2.1, etc."

What we've done successfully many times is to simply copy IBM ado.net assembly (IBM.Data.DB2.iSeries.dll) into the local /bin directory and reference that copy. You don't need the rest of client access in the bin directory (though you do need it installed). We've done this successfully across upgrades many times. The difference is, since we're using a local dll and not the GAC dll we don't need the strong name, we can simply refer to the dll by name and .net will use whatever version it finds.

Obviously if you develop against version 12 of the dll you may have problems running against version 10, but that's understandable. However, if you develop against version 10, then you should be ok running against version 12, or whatever 7.1 version # is.

-Walden