an application that responds to various OLE DB calls to provide information to a data consumer
An OLE DB provider, such as one of the DataDirect OLE DB components, that exposes data.
Software that exposes data to an ADO application either directly or via a service provider. See also service provider.
A data source that exposes information for data access, such as Microsoft Jet, Microsoft SQL, or Oracle.
A data provider maintains one or more repositories (web servers) that supports the OAI-PMH as a means of exposing metadata. (Definition quoted from the Glossary in the OAI for Beginners, the Open Archives Forum online tutorial)
As the term is used with Oracle Data Provider for .NET, a data provider is the connected component in the ADO.NET model and transfers data between a data source and the DataSet.
A Data Provider maintains one or more repositories (web servers) that support the OAI-PMH as a means of exposing metadata. Source: FAQ on Open Archives Initiative Web site at http://www.openarchives.org