Hello,

I am trying to work with MS SQL Server 7 from the release version of
Visual Studio 2008 + LINQ to SQL. And the problem is that the LINQ to
SQL designer doesn't accept my tables saying that my connection
provider is unsupported. Then I found out that LINQ to SQL officially
supports only .NET Provider for SQL Server. The problem is that SQL
Server 7 can't work with this provider, so I have to use the .NET
Provider for OLE DB. Well, at least, ServerExplorer can't connect to
SQL Server 7 using .NET Provider for SQL Server...

Now the interesting thing is that this is a designer's problem only!
Actually LINQ to SQL do can communicate with SQL Server 7 without any
problems, including inserting data. I've implemented my data context
without using the designer, as follows:

class MyDataContext : System.Data.Linq.DataContext
{
  public System.Data.Linq.Table<CUSTOMER> CUSTOMERs;

  [System.Diagnostics.DebuggerNonUserCodeAttribute()]
  public MyDataContext() :
     base(new System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection("Data
Source=10.1.1.1;Persist Security Info=True;Password=111;User
ID=111;Initial Catalog=DEVELOP_DEKEL_PUBLISH"))
  {
  }
}

Please note that I am using here System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.
And this works excellent.
The only problem is that I do that manually, I can't use the
designer...

So, ServerExplorer can only connect to the db using .NET Provider for
OLE DB while LINQ itself can use the SQL Provider without any
problems. And therefore the only thing that I need to do is to
convince the LINQ designer that it actually CAN handle my db =)

Can anybody offer some idea?