The RSSBus ADO.NET Providers can be used from many applications and development environments. In this article, we show how to use LINQPad to connect to QuickBooks using the RSSBus ADO.NET Provider for QuickBooks. Although this example uses the QuickBooks Data Provider, the same process applies to any of our ADO.NET Providers.

Create the Data Model

• Step 1: Download and install both the Data Provider from RSSBus and LINQPad (available at www.linqpad.net
• Step 2: Create a new project in Visual Studio and create a data model for it using the ADO.NET Entity Data Model wizard.

• Step 3: Create a new connection by clicking "New Connection", specify the connection string options, and click Next.

• Step 4: Select the desired tables and views and click Finish to create the data model.

• Step 5: Right click on the entity diagram and select 'Add Code Generation Item'. Choose the 'ADO.NET DbContext Generator'.

• Step 6: Now build the project. The generated files can be used to create a QuickBooks connection in LINQPad.

Create the connection to QuickBooks in LINQPad

• Step 7:Open LINQPad and click 'Add New Connection'.

• Step 8: Choose 'Entity Framework DbContext POCO'.

• Step 9: Choose the data model assembly ('.dll') created by Visual Studio as the 'Path to Custom Assembly'. Choose the name of the custom DbContext, the path to the config file, and assign a name to the connection that will allow you to recognize its purpose.

• Step 10: Congratulations! Now you have a connection to QuickBooks, and you can query data through LINQPad.