General rules for when to use which types of memberships in MVC

Question

Already I have known 3 types of memberships in Microsoft MVC. They are:

1. membershipprovider
2. extendedmembershipprovider
3. simplemembershipprovider

Obviously they have differences to use. What is the key advantage for selecting each of them? May somebody describe?

Thanks.

Answer 1

The following post from Jon Galloway goes into great detail explaining what I think it is you are asking.

The article includes a class diagram that shows the relationship between all three classes that you have listed.

The relevant take-away quote is this one:

SimpleMembershipProvider is an implementaiton of an ExtendedMembershipProvider, which inherits from MembershipProvider and adds some other account / OAuth related things.

Be sure to look at the class diagram, it is in the section called How SimpleMembership integrates with ASP.NET Membership

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

MembershipProvider is an abstract class that all other membership providers inherit from. You can't create an instance of it, because it's abstract.

There are other membership providers, such as SqlMembershipProvider, and the universal membership providers, that inherit from this as well, not to mention MySqlMembershipProvider, OracleMembershipProvider, etc.. etc.. etc..

Microsoft created a more simplified provider model, called the ExtendedMembershipProvider, which also inherits from MembershipProvider. Like MembershipProvider, ExtendedMembershipProvider is also abstract and cannot be instantiated. You need to inherit from it.

SimpleMembershipProvider inherits from ExendedMembershipProvider, and there may be others as well.