Help with Activator.CreateInstance for DB Provider

Question

I followed the Activator.CreateInstance method but I can't get this core piece to work. I have a MSAccess db provider for testing purposes but keep getting a compiling error. Can someone help me as to what I'm doing wrong?
namespace Company.DAL
{
public abstract class ConfigProvider : DataAccess
{
static private ConfigProvider _instance = null;
static public ConfigProvider Instance
{
get
{
if (_instance == null)
_instance = (ConfigProvider)Activator.CreateInstance(
Type.GetType(Company.DAL.MdbClient.MdbConfig));
return _instance;
}
}
public abstract string GetConfigValue(ConfigXML site, string id, string name);
}
}
Then in the "interchangable" data access layer I have this:
namespace Company.DAL.MdbClient
{
public class MdbConfig : ConfigProvider
{
public override string GetConfigValue(ConfigXML site, string id, string name)
{
try
{
string connString = WebConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings[site.SettingsTable.ConnectionStringName].ConnectionString;
string sqlCmd = "SELECT Value FROM " + site.SettingsTable.TableName + " WHERE UCASE(id)='" + id.ToUpper() + "' AND UCASE(name)='" + name.ToUpper() + "'";
using (OleDbConnection conn = new OleDbConnection(connString))
{
OleDbCommand cmd = new OleDbCommand(sqlCmd, conn);
conn.Open();
object obj = cmd.ExecuteScalar();
if (obj.Equals(System.DBNull.Value))
return string.Empty;
else
return (string)obj;
}
}
catch
{
return string.Empty;
}
}
}
}
Then in my aspx page I'm calling the method like this:
Response.Write(ConfigProvider.Instance.GetConfigValue(domain, "company", "Address1"));
But I get this error:
Compiler Error Message: CS0119: 'Company.DAL.MdbClient.MdbConfig' is a 'type', which is not valid in the given context
Source Error:
Line 21:                 if (_instance == null)
Line 22:                     _instance = (ConfigProvider)Activator.CreateInstance(
Line 23:                        Type.GetType(Company.DAL.MdbClient.MdbConfig));
Line 24:                 return _instance;
Line 25:             }

Alan · Answer

The Type.GetType() method takes as its parameter the string representation of a type rather than the type itself. So, it should work if you change:
Type.GetType(Company.DAL.MdbClient.MdbConfig)
to:
Type.GetType("Company.DAL.MdbClient.MdbConfig")