Creating a Custom Entity Framework for Unsupported System

I could be totally misunderstanding Entity Framework here. I want to use that in my latest project (how else do you learn?) The problem is that the IBM i driver doesn't have support for that built in. Is is possible to开发者_JAVA百科 create that framework from scratch? It is worth it?

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It sounds like you'd be writing your own ADO.NET data provider to connect to IBM DB2 for i. Microsoft provides documentation for creating your own provider and a sample.

The data provider would be responsible for communicating with the database, so I'm not sure how you'd accomplish that. Either you'd be implementing your own connection to the database server running on the i (maybe you can port the SQL piece of JTOpen), or you'd be delegating your calls to the IBM-provided data provider (if that's even possible) or other data access method.

I couldn't decide whether I thought this was (1) a huge pain in the butt or (2) an opportunity for an open source project. (I guess it could be both.) It seems like it'd be easier to lobby IBM to make this part of their stock provider. You might complain about it on MIDRANGE-L and see if people will take up the cause.

Disclaimer: I am a newbie in the .NET world, so maybe there's an easier way to accomplish what you're trying to do.