EntityFrameworkCore.Jet

EntityFrameworkCore.Jet is an Entity Framework Core provider for Microsoft Jet/ACE databases (supporting the Microsoft Access database file formats MDB and ACCDB).

Compatibility Matrix

EntityFrameworkCore.Jet Version	Entity Framework Core Version	.NET	Notes
11.0.x	11.0.x	11.0+	Current development line
10.0.x	10.0.x	10.0+	Supported
9.0.x	9.0.x	9.0+	Supported
8.0.x	8.0.x	8.0+	Alpha 2 onwards is compatible with EF Core RTM
7.0.x	7.0.x	6.0+
6.0.x	6.0.x	6.0+

The major version corresponds to the major version of EF Core (i.e. EFCore.Jet 3.x is compatible with EF Core 3.y). It runs on Windows operating systems only and can be used with either ODBC or OLE DB together with their respective Access Database driver/provider.

Requirements

EntityFrameworkCore.Jet requires:

• Windows.
• A Microsoft Access Database Engine driver/provider for either ODBC or OLE DB.
• A process architecture (x86 or x64) that matches the installed Access driver/provider.

The provider works with Microsoft Access MDB and ACCDB database files.

Packages

• EntityFrameworkCore.Jet - the EF Core provider.
• EntityFrameworkCore.Jet.Data - the shared ADO.NET-style data access layer used by the provider packages.
• EntityFrameworkCore.Jet.Odbc - ODBC support, including the UseJetOdbc extension method.
• EntityFrameworkCore.Jet.OleDb - OLE DB support, including the UseJetOleDb extension method.

Getting Started

Install the provider package for the data access technology you want to use:

dotnet add package EntityFrameworkCore.Jet.OleDb

or:

dotnet add package EntityFrameworkCore.Jet.Odbc

Configure your DbContext with the matching UseJet... extension method:

using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;

public class BloggingContext : DbContext
{
    public DbSet<Blog> Blogs => Set<Blog>();

    protected override void OnConfiguring(DbContextOptionsBuilder optionsBuilder)
        => optionsBuilder.UseJetOleDb(
            @"Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source=C:\Data\Blogging.accdb");
}

public class Blog
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string? Url { get; set; }
}

For ODBC, use UseJetOdbc instead:

optionsBuilder.UseJetOdbc(
    @"Driver={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb, *.accdb)};Dbq=C:\Data\Blogging.accdb;");

NuGet Feeds

Official Releases

All official releases are available on nuget.org.

CI Builds

CI publishes each build to MyGet. To use the latest CI builds, add a NuGet.config file to your solution root, add the feeds you are interested in and enable prereleases:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <packageSources>
    <add key="efcorejet-daily" value="https://www.myget.org/F/cirrusred/api/v3/index.json" />
    <add key="efcorejet-daily-debug" value="https://www.myget.org/F/cirrusred-debug/api/v3/index.json" />
    <add key="nuget.org" value="https://api.nuget.org/v3/index.json" />
  </packageSources>
</configuration>

There are two CI build feeds available, one with (optimized) Release configuration builds and one with (unoptimized) Debug configuration builds. All packages use SourceLink.

Fluent API

In order to simplify writing code for more than just one provider, some Fluent API method names have been made specific to Jet. Examples are:

• UseIdentityColumn -> UseJetIdentityColumn
• UseIdentityColumns -> UseJetIdentityColumns

LibRed - native managed engine (in development)

LibRed is a from-scratch, fully managed implementation of the Jet/ACE engine that lives in this repository. It reads and writes MDB/ACCDB files directly - no ODBC, OLE DB, DAO or ADOX - so it removes both the Windows-only requirement and the need to match your process architecture to an installed Access driver.

It reads and writes real database files, runs SQL end to end, and an EF Core DbContext round-trips through it today. It is still in development and is not published as a NuGet package; the on-disk format it depends on is documented and verified in src/LibRed/docs/format/.

Further information

More information can be found on our Wiki.

Questions

Questions, bug reports, and feature requests can be opened as GitHub issues.