As the Core member responsible for data access issues I have been profoundly frustrated at my inability to deliver any free alternate data providers.

There is an Oracle provider that has has a long history and is well supported. There is also a MySQL provider. Both of these you have to pay for.

The Firebird provider was free but after a year and a half we were unable to make a release because we constantly lost team members. I feel the reason why is it didn't meet the requirements for success:

• Who Wants it?
• Who Needs it?
• Who Likes it?

For example, look at DotNetNuke...

• Who Wants it? - Who doesn't want a free easy to use and expand Framework.
• Who Needs it? - Practically every developer who needs to deliver a solution.
• Who Likes it? - Millions who have used it.

Now look at Firbird...

• Who Wants it? - Many people wanted a free powerful database.. until they realized that SQL Express worked in many cases and that you can pay as little as $25 a month for the full SQL server
• Who Needs it? - Here was the key, no one on the team ran DotNetNuke using the Firebird provider.
• Who Likes it? - After spending months working with Firebird I realized that I really like Microsoft SQL. This alone would have not stopped the project nor my support for it. But, I need to look at myself before pointing fingers at others.

I spent some time using MySQL when I attempted to make a MySQL provider for free. I do like MySQL and I made tutorials showing how to use it with .Net. A week after creating the article I looked on Google and my article was the number one article returned (the Codeproject article - it has since moved down to number three). This tells me that while MySQL is big, it has very small usage with ASP.NET.

I feel that the reason I have been unsuccessful in nurturing free alternate data providers for DotNetNuke is that among the people interested in DotNetNuke there are not enough interested in using a database other than Microsoft SQL Server.

(or Microsoft Access - sorry but with SQL Server Express being free we cannot justify the development resources required to support it. Though we do realize a lot of people out there love Microsoft Access)

With that said, I continue to remain willing and ready to support anyone who wants to create an alternate data provider for DotNetNuke. If you are willing to get the project going I and the Core are ready and willing to do all we can to help you.