Zen v16 ADO.NET Core Data Provider and Entity Framework Core Data Provider for .NET Standard 2.0 Release Notes
General Release – December 2025
Contents
These release notes cover the following topics:

• | About Zen ADO.NET Core Data Providers

• | About Zen ADO.NET Entity Framework Core Data Providers

• | Samples

• | Technical Support

About Zen ADO.NET Core Data Providers
Zen ADO.NET Core data providers are available for use by applications running on systems that have a .NET implementation compatible with version 2.0 of the .NET Standard specification of .NET APIs. For more information about compatibility and how to use the core data provider, see the topic "Zen ADO.NET Core data providers" in Zen Data Providers for ADO.NET Guide to Developing Applications.
Note the core data providers referenced in these release notes are different from the data providers installed with Zen. See the Quick Start section of the Zen ADO.NET guide for descriptions of their respective uses.
If you are creating an application that needs to run on target systems with .NET Framework 4.8.1 or earlier, use the Zen ADO.NET data providers for .NET Framework installed with the Zen database engine. For more information regarding Zen ADO.NET data providers for .NET Framework, see the readme in the SDK for that provider.
For information regarding differences between Zen ADO.NET data providers and Zen ADO.NET Core data providers, see the topic "Zen ADO.NET Data Provider Features That Are Missing in Zen ADO.NET Core Data Provider" in Zen Data Providers for ADO.NET Guide to Developing Applications.
About Zen ADO.NET Entity Framework Core Data Providers
Zen ADO.NET Entity Framework Core data providers are available for use by applications that use the ADO.NET Entity Framework Core 3.1 or 6.0. For more information about compatibility and how to use the providers, see Zen Data Providers for ADO.NET Guide to Developing Applications. This guide is included in the \doc directory of the SDK download. For further information about developing .NET applications, see Zen Zen Programmer’s Guide in the Zen developer documentation.
Samples
The following table lists the samples included with Zen ADO.NET Core data providers in a directory named samples\Provider\netstandard2.0.

Directory | Sample Directory | Purpose of Sample
--- | --- | ---
\ActianZenNetCore (see note) | BasicCRUD | Creates a .NET Core command line application that performs basic Create, Read, Update, and Delete operations in a Zen database.
\ActianZenNetCore\UWP (see note) | UWP | Creates UWP application with a button for testing Zen connections.
\ActianZenEntityCore (see note) | CodeFirstMigrationsWorkflow CodeFirstWorkflow | See \ActianZenEntityCore\Readme.txt
Note: For the 4.5 provider, the samples in the SDK have been upgraded to require Visual Studio 2022 and are set to target .NET 6 by default (<TargetFramework>net6.0</TargetFramework>). For the 4.6 provider, the samples have been upgraded to require Visual Studio 2022 and are set to target .NET 8 by default (<TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework>). To use these samples with Visual Studio 2019, before compiling them you must manually edit the TargetFramework property to use a version prior to "net6.0" and also use a version prior to "6.0.0" in the PackageReference property for Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools, System.Security.Permissions, and System.Text.Encoding.CodePages. To use these samples with Visual Studio 2022, before compiling them you must execute an Add-Migration command as described in the code comments for the CodeFirstMigrationsWorkflow project.

Technical Support
For support services, visit the Actian Community and Customer Portal and select Actian Zen from the product menu. You can do the following things:

• | Join a community forum discussion

• | Search for knowledge base topics

• | Log a support case

• | Purchase support services

• | Resolve licensing issues

Disclaimer
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