I did a simple benchmark for the 3 main databases (Oracle 11g, MySQL 5.1, SQL Server 2008) to see how using ODBC compares to using their native providers in .NET for all database access. To keep things on an even playing field, all 3 databases were run on the same machine, with the exact same database name, table name, and schema. Database authenticaton was used by all databases.

I’ve created a tool to help test different connection strings and settings for the various databases. The information out there on certain database connection types is poor at best so this was put together over a week long process of testing and reverse engineering. A lot of forums and blog posts were pieced together to figure all of this out.

Many times, you may need to get the list of currently set up ODBC data source names on the machine where your code is running from. There is no .NET API to get this list so you have to monkey with Windows registry a bit to find the list. There are 2 different types of ODBC data sources you can set up (User and System). The Data Source Names can be found in Windows by going to Administrative Tools->Data Sources(ODBC).

UPDATE: This method is generally used in situations where you have relative paths in your project so that links (image, href, css, etc) work on your development environment (where the VS web server inserts a virtual path), as well as your production environment that may or may not have that same virtual path.  The simpler way to handle this situation is to change the virtual path in your development environment.  To do this, click on your web site project and look in the properties dialog.  You should see a Virtual Path setting.

If you're working with Ajax in .NET, you'll probably see an exception like this at some point:

Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation

Not very helpful.  What you need to do is tell the ScriptManager to catch post back errors and re-throw the InnerException.  Change your ScriptManager to look like this:

    <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager1" runat="server" OnAsyncPostBackError="ScriptManager1_AsyncPostBackError">
    </asp:ScriptManager>