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How To Obtain Underlying Provider Errors by Using ADO.NET in Visual Basic .NET

Article ID: 308043 - View products that this article applies to.

This article was previously published under Q308043

SUMMARY

Managed providers can raise several exceptions. To obtain more detailed information about the cause, you need access to provider-specific error information. This article dicusses how to obtain the underlying provider errors when using ADO.NET in Visual Basic .NET.

Requirements

The following list outlines the recommended hardware, software, network infrastructure, and service packs that you need:

Microsoft .NET Framework
Microsoft Visual Basic .NET

This article assumes that you are familiar with the following topics:

Exceptions
Microsoft OLE DB
Error handling

Steps to Obtain Underlying Provider Errors

To obtain more detailed information about the cause of an exception, wrap your code in a try-catch block, catch the exception, and process the Errors collection from the OleDbException class.

Start Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, and then create a new Windows Application project in Visual Basic .NET. Form1 is created by default.
Open Form1.vb in code, copy the following code, and paste the code at the beginning of the form:
Imports System.Data.OleDb

Copy the following code into the Form1 Load event:

Dim ex As OleDbException
Dim cn As OleDbConnection = New OleDbConnection("Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Data Source=MyWrongServerName")
Try
    cn.Open()
Catch ex
    Dim i As Integer
    For i = 0 To ex.Errors.Count - 1
        MessageBox.Show("Index #" + i.ToString() + ControlChars.Cr _
           + "Message: " + ex.Errors(i).Message + ControlChars.Cr _
           + "Native: " + ex.Errors(i).NativeError.ToString() + ControlChars.Cr _
           + "Source: " + ex.Errors(i).Source + ControlChars.Cr _
           + "SQL: " + ex.Errors(i).SQLState + ControlChars.Cr)
    Next i
End Try