Everyone loves MySql. It is everywhere. This website runs on it.

But I keep having problems when I use it as the database for .NET applications.

I delivered an application last week. A fairly standard windows desktop application. Except that the database it was connecting to was MySql. As usual, I did my data access using my favourite OR/M tool, LLBLGen. The application crashed at the client’s site as soon as they tried to access the database.

I checked the connection string, and that was OK. In any event, the exception didn’t look like that was the problem. It seems that the ado.net provider was missing. But that made no sense to me.

So I loaded it up on  a clean install of XP, that is what the client is running, on a virtual machine that only had the .Net framework and MySql installed. Everything else came straight from source control. And it worked fine.

I hate bugs that I cannot reproduce, and it is driving me crazy!

I am now in the process of cleaning out everything on my laptop, copying those things that I think I need to an external drive, and reloading Windows from scratch. I will try to reproduce the bug on it.

It sounds crazy that I am spending all this time trying to produce a bug. I usually spend my time trying to get rid of them.